Hershey workers want don-doff time pay. Is that covered by the FLSA?

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Is suiting up for work part of the workday? An ex-Hershey manufacturing unit employee and her co-plaintiffs assume so.

Citing the need of conforming to the Meals and Drug Administration’s hygiene calls for, the plaintiff is asking for retroactive compensation for the time she wanted to don and doff sanitary clothes and different protecting gear. The class-action lawsuit was filed in an Illinois district courtroom on a giant day for Hershey — Feb. 14 (Hollifield v. The Hershey Co., No. 3:23-cv-00473 (S.D. In poor health. Feb. 14, 2023)).

This swimsuit suggests not compensating employees for such time is a violation of the Truthful Labor Requirements Act, for which the U.S. Division of Labor has issued steering surrounding the altering of garments. 

What do the laws say?

Per DOL’s FLSA laws, clothes-changing or washing time have to be paid whether it is indispensable to the efficiency of the worker’s work or is required by legislation or by the principles of the employer — until a collective bargaining settlement says in any other case.

What’s the don-doff precedent right here?

On the time of the primary opinion letter in 1997, DOL’s Wage and Hour administrator sought to parse out whether or not “garments” contains protecting gear; they concluded that point spent donning, doffing and cleansing protecting gear (on this case, within the meat-packing trade) was compensable — as a result of it’s not simply “garments.” 

The “plain that means” of that time period refers to attire, whereas protecting gear corresponding to rubber gloves and boots, shin and arm guards, wrist wraps, polar sleeves and mesh aprons aren’t merely “garments” and are worn over stated attire. 

WHD reaffirmed this opinion twice over the subsequent 4 years, then reversed course in 2002. 

Since then, courts have been break up on whether or not “protecting gear” or in some instances, “protecting clothes” depend because the “garments” modified for which employees can’t be compensated. 

The U.S. Supreme Courtroom dominated in IBP v. Alvarez, 546 U.S. 21 (2005), that journey time from a locker room to a worksite was eligible for pay. Affirmed on different grounds, the time wanted to placed on and take off protecting gear was additionally eligible for pay.

Nonetheless, SCOTUS later overturned each of those judgments in Sandifer v. United States Metal Corp., 571 US 220 (2014). In that opinion, the excessive courtroom opined that becoming required security gear constitutes “altering garments” underneath the FLSA.

What does this imply for HR?

The Hershey case and the controversial historical past of don-doff precedents convey with them a possible check-up for HR professionals: Are the principal actions of every job outlined? Is there a centralized place the place every worker can discover this info?

For instance, courts maintained in instances involving Sara Lee and Butterball that clothes-changing isn’t a principal exercise. Within the Hershey swimsuit, the plaintiff’s attorneys argued that “the donning and doffing of sanitary clothes and different protecting gear is integral and indispensable to the work carried out by Defendant’s staff who’re concerned within the manufacturing, packaging, and dealing with of meals.” It’s the Hershey manufacturing unit employees’ first principal exercise of the workday, the lawyer maintained.

In flip, courts have debated whether or not post-changing transit is compensable.

Time will inform which set of opinion letters affect the Hershey determination, however HR can keep geared up by trying to the Labor Division’s reality sheet on the truthful labor requirements laws. The DOL defines phrases like “make use of,” “workday” and “principal actions,” and gives finest practices therein together with ready time, on-call time, relaxation and meal durations, coaching and dealing time and a few sleeping instances.