The Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor brought this action o enjoin t he Rutherford Food Corporation and the Kaiser Packing Company from further violating the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Administrator alleged that the defendants had repeatedly failed to keep proper records and to pay certain of its employees overtime as required by § 7 of the Act. The District Court refused to grant the injunction. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed on appeal, and directed the entry of the judgment substantially as prayed for. Walling v. Rutherford Food Corporation, 10 Cir., 156 F.2d 513. We brought the case here because of the importance of the issues presented by the petition for certiorari to the administration of the Act.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, enacted June 25, 1938, is a part of the social legislation of the 1930's of the same general character as the National Labor Relations Act of July 5, 1935, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., and the Social Security Act of August 14, 1935, 49 Stat. 620, 42 U.S.C.A. § 301 et seq. Decisions that define the coverage of the employer-Employee relationship under the Labor and Social Security acts are persuasive in the consideration of a similar coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act. See National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111, 64 S.Ct. 851, 88 L.Ed. 1170; United States v. Silk, 331 U.S. 704, 67 S.Ct. 1463.
The petitioners are corporations of Missouri authorized to do business in Kansas. The slaughterhouse of the Kaiser Packing Company, the place of the alleged violations with which we are concerned, and the principal place of business of that company, is in Kansas City, Kansas, from which it ships meat in interstate commerce. Since 1942 most of its product has been boned beef. The petitioner, Rutherford Food Corporation, has its principal place of business and its plant for processing meat products in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1943, Rutherford bought 51% of the stock of Kaiser in order to assure itself of a constant supply of boned beef for contracts it had with the U.S. Army. Kaiser had been operating and continued to operate at a loss, and Rutherford advanced more than $50,000 to Kaiser between March, when Rutherford bought the Kaiser stock, and July 1943. To assure itself of a continued supply of meat, Rutherford leased Kaiser's facilities and took over operation of the slaughterhouse in July. In May, 1944, the lease was terminated and Rutherford's stock interest in Kaiser sold, so that Kaiser might qualify for subsidies granted by the Defense Supplies Corporation to unaffiliated nonprocessing slaughterers under its Regulation No. 3.