For much of the last decade, “donning and doffing” lawsuits have been brought around the country with varying degrees of success. Very generally, “donning and doffing” refers to the putting on and taking off of clothes, equipment and protective gear that employees in certain industries are required to wear during their workday. Questions arise concerning when, where and how long it takes employees to “don” and “doff” such gear, and what–if any–portion of the time spent in these activities is compensable. In Sandifer, et al. v. United States Steel Corp., the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to bring some degree of clarity to a couple of the larger issues faced by litigants in donning and doffing matters.

The plaintiffs were a group of employees of steelmaking facilities seeking back pay for the substantial amount of time spent donning and doffing protective gear required to be worn in a steel plant. Such time is typically compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Supreme Court, however, confirmed that 29 U.S.C. section 203(o) allows parties to decide, as part of a collective-bargaining agreement, that “time spent in changing clothes ... at the beginning or end of each workday” is noncompensable. The parties were subject to a collective bargaining agreement that contained such an exclusion; thus, the question became whether the time spent donning and doffing the gear at issue here constituted “changing clothes” for purposes of the exclusion.

The Supreme Court pulled out their 1949 (the year the provision was added to the law) dictionaries to look at the definition of “clothes,” and held that in this case, most of the gear the plaintiffs were required to don and doff met the definition of “clothes,” thus the entire period of time was noncompensable under the parties’ collective bargaining agreement. If the employees had devoted the majority of the time in question to putting on and taking off safety gear or other non-clothes items, then the entire period would not qualify as time spent changing clothes and would have been compensable.

There are a few important things to take from this case:

1. Employers and unions can negotiate collective bargaining agreements that treat “changing clothes” as noncompensable, even when that time would otherwise be compensable under the FLSA;
2. Rather than taking an item-by-item approach, in order to determine whether the time is being spent “changing clothes,” courts are to look at the activity as a whole and determine whether the majority of the time is spent changing clothes or donning and doffing protective gear;
3. In order to determine the answer to #2, courts are still going to have to engage in a somewhat fact-specific analysis of the activity at issue; and
4. While most discussion of this case is likely to focus on the fact that time spent changing clothes is not compensable, the case does not really do much to change the existing law, nor does it address issues such as whether time spent walking to a workstation after donning and doffing may be compensable (even when the donning and doffing itself is not).

If you have any questions, please contact Jason Jasmine at jason@majlabor.com.