Hanging Its Opinion on the "Clothes" Line: Organized Labor Weighs In On The Donning/Doffing Debate

Earlier this year, we commented [here] that the Supreme Court agreed to review the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Sandifer v. U.S. Steel rejecting claims by 800 factory workers that they are owed wages for time spent before and after their shifts in a locker room changing into and out of their job-required protective gear.  The Supreme Court in this case will decide “[w]hat constitutes ‘changing clothes’ within the meaning of Section 203(o).”  In earlier blogs [here and here], we discussed the contradictions between the plain language of Section 203(o) of the FLSA -- which allows parties to specify in collective bargaining agreements that time spent “changing clothes” is not compensable -- and various DOL interpretations, including its current view that protective gear is excluded from the definition of “clothes.”  The AFL-CIO and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union recently filed an amicus brief [here] with the Supreme Court siding with the DOL and arguing that the Seventh Circuit’s decision should be reversed.

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