29 C.F.R. § 776.11 Employees Doing Work Related to Instrumentalities of Commerce

• Library: Code of Federal Regulations
• Edition: 2023
• Currency: Current through October 31, 2023

(a) Another large category of employees covered as "engaged in commerce" is comprised of employees performing the work involved in the maintenance, repair, or improvement of existing instrumentalities of commerce. (See the cases cited in footnote 28 to § 29undefined776.9. See also the discussion of coverage of employees engaged in building and construction work, in subpart B of this part.) Typical illustrations of instrumentalities of commerce include railroads, highways, city streets, pipe lines, telephone lines, electrical transmission lines, rivers, streams, or other waterways over which interstate or foreign commerce more or less regularly moves; airports; railroad, bus, truck, or steamship terminals; telephone exchanges, radio and television stations, post offices and express offices; bridges and ferries carrying traffic moving in interstate or foreign commerce (even though within a single State); bays, harbors, piers, wharves and docks used for shipping between a State and points outside; dams, dikes, revetments and levees which directly facilitate the uninterrupted movement of commerce by enhancing or improving the usefulness of waterways, railways, and highways through control of water depth, channels or flow in streams or through control of flood waters; warehouses or distribution depots devoted to the receipt and shipment of goods in interstate or foreign commerce; ships, vehicles, and aircraft regularly used in transportation of persons or goods in commerce; and similar fixed or movable facilities on which the flow of interstate and foreign commerce depends.

(b) It is well settled that the work of employees involved in the maintenance, repair, or improvement of such existing instrumentalities of commerce is so closely related to interstate or foreign commerce as to be in practice and in legal contemplation a part of it. Included among the employees who are thus "engaged in commerce" within the meaning of the Act are employees of railroads, telephone companies, and similar instrumentalities who are engaged in maintenance-of-way work; 36 employees (including office workers, guards, watchmen, etc.) engaged in work on contracts or projects for the maintenance, repair, reconstruction or other improvement of such instrumentalities of...