Uncle Sam Picks Up the Check

WAGES & SALARIES

A way out of the jungle of portal-to-portal pay suits was suggested last week by the U.S. Department of Justice. It asked Detroit's Federal Court judge, Frank A. Picard, to dismiss the Mount Clemens Pottery Co. case (TIME, Dec.

16), the test suit on which portal-to-portal claims totaling almost $5 billion are based. The Justice Department argued that the "walking" time claimed by employees was "trifling." In upholding portal-to-portal principle, the Supreme Court had left it to the lower courts (in this case Judge Picard) to determine whether a claim was based on a trifling matter of time. If so, then "such trifles," said the court, "may be disregarded." The Justice Department, in effect, argued that virtually all the suits were based on such trifles and should be thrown out of court.

The Federal Government's belated entry into the controversy was more than just an interest in the fine points of law.

Its pocketbook was concerned. For the Treasury ruled last week that an employer could get back in tax-rebates some 60% of all portal-to-portal claims paid. And war contractors who had been on a cost-plus-fixed-fee basis could probably collect from the Government 100% of claims paid. On the basis of the suits filed so far, the Government stood to lose as much as $4 billion.

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