In a decision that could impact a range of employers, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that companies must pay workers for the time it takes to change into protective clothing and safety gear, and to walk to and from their workstations, even if waiting time is involved. In a small victory for employers, the Court ruled that workers need not be compensated for the time spent waiting to first put on their protective gear (but they must be paid for any time spent waiting to remove it).

The unanimous opinion involved two consolidated cases (one concerning a meat packing plant in Washington state and the other a chicken processing facility in Maine) raising the same issue of when compensable time starts for slaughterhouse workers who first must don special gear before walking to their work stations. One lower court had ruled that the workers must be paid from the moment they begin to don the protective gear until they remove it and the other court ruled that time spent walking to and from the workstation in the special gear did not require compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The Supreme Court used a "continuous workday" rule in determining what worker activities must be compensated. A workday commences when an activity that is "integral and indispensable" to the principal activity of the job occurs. The Court found that donning the protective gear was "integral and indispensable" to the job of meat processing so that any activity after that time, such as the time employees spend walking between the changing area and the production area, is compensable under the FLSA.

The federal Department of Labor had filed a brief in the cases on behalf of the workers, stating that the department’s position was that employees in meat and poultry processing plants must be paid for the time they spend walking between the place where they put on and take off protective equipment and the place where they process the meat. The high court’s opinion did give deference to the department’s regulations interpreting the FLSA.

Although the reach of this decision has yet to be determined, employers should consider if it affects the way they compensate workers and if so what the impact will be on the bottom line. Employers who require workers to perform some "integral and indispensable" preliminary duties prior to the start of compensable time, such as putting on special clothing, warming up machines, or logging onto computers, will want to discuss this ruling with an employment specialist to determine if their compensation practices need to be altered.

Given that the donning of essential clothing and equipment marks the beginning of the employee’s compensable workday under this decision, employers seeking to minimize their employees’ total compensable time should locate such gear as close as possible to employees’ actual work stations and make sure that employees wait until just prior to their scheduled start times to put on their equipment. Employers should also provide adequate locker facilities to ensure that employees do not have to wait long periods of time to change out of their required clothing and equipment at the end of the workday since this waiting time is compensable.

Representatives for both the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed disappointment in the ruling, worrying that the increased cost to employers could result in more off-shoring of jobs.

On a per-worker basis, the additional time that must be compensated under the ruling will not amount to a large sum but when all employees are added up and the extra time is compensated week after week, some employers will face a considerable new cost burden. Likely most affected will be employers where workers must don special gear before beginning work, jobs where special uniforms are changed into at the work place, or facilities that have a long walk from the locker room to the workstation. Also, the ruling did not address whether the decision on when compensable time begins would be applied retroactively. The cases were sent back to the lower courts "for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." A host of lawsuits demanding back pay for "walking and waiting" time could result.