## Facts

- Lauritzen Farms operated a Wisconsin pickle-farming business using seasonal migrant families to hand-harvest pickles during the summer harvest.
- Lauritzen hired families on a yearly basis; many returned to work for the farm in successive seasons.
- The farm provided housing during the harvest and supplied essentially all equipment needed for the work, except work gloves.
- Fields were divided into “family plots,” assigned based on arrival time and how much the family wished to harvest.
- The work required repetitive hand picking, stooping, and kneeling, typically after only brief instruction and with minimal skill requirements.
- Families were paid on a piece-rate basis, with compensation affected by grading of pickle quality at the farm’s grading station; a family member transported the day’s harvest using Lauritzen’s truck.
- The workers had no meaningful capital investment in the farming operation and bore no business risk of loss beyond their own labor.
- Lauritzen treated the harvesters as independent contractors; the Secretary of Labor asserted they were employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and sought relief for recordkeeping and child-labor violations.

## Issues

1. Whether, under the FLSA’s “economic reality” test, Lauritzen’s migrant pickle harvesters were employees rather than independent contractors.
2. Whether the undisputed facts permitted summary judgment establishing employee status and supporting injunctive relief for recordkeeping and child-labor violations.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgment that the harvesters were FLSA employees.
- The court affirmed entry of an injunction barring future violations of the FLSA’s recordkeeping and child-labor provisions.
- The court rejected reliance on contractual labels and treated the classification question as controlled by economic reality rather than formal designation.
- Judge Easterbrook concurred, agreeing with the employee classification and emphasizing economic dependence as the central inquiry.

## Legal Principles

- FLSA “employment” is defined broadly; the controlling question is whether workers are, as a matter of economic reality, dependent on the business to which they render service.
- Employee status is assessed using a non-exhaustive, multi-factor economic reality test, commonly considering:
  - the nature and degree of the alleged employer’s control,
  - the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss,
  - the worker’s investment in equipment or materials,
  - the degree of skill required,
  - the permanence of the working relationship, and
  - whether the work is integral to the alleged employer’s business.
- No single factor is determinative; courts weigh the totality of circumstances.
- Piece-rate compensation and quality-based grading do not, by themselves, establish independent contractor status where workers lack meaningful control over business conditions and assume no entrepreneurial risk.
- Provision of housing, tools, and equipment by the alleged employer, minimal worker investment, low skill requirements, recurring seasonal return, and the integral nature of harvesting to a farming enterprise support employee classification.

## Conclusion

The court held that Lauritzen’s migrant pickle harvesters were employees under the FLSA because they were economically dependent on Lauritzen’s farming operation, and it upheld summary judgment and injunctive relief addressing recordkeeping and child-labor compliance.


Sec’y of Lab., U.S. Dep’t of Lab. v. Lauritzen, 835 F.2d 1529 (7th Cir. 1987)