Posted on 05-Jul-08 by The Timekeeper

As Mark Toth points out in a recent post in the Manpower Employment Blawg, “donning and doffing” is a gray area of wage and hour law. (Donning and doffing generally refers to the time employees spend putting on and taking off protective gear and clothing.)

Quick roundup of where things stand at the moment:

• In the case of Anderson v. Cagle’s Inc., the Eleventh Circuit ruled union poultry plant employees were not entitled to pay for time spent donning and doffing because of their collective bargaining agreement.
• In Gormon v. Consolidated Edison Corp., the Second Circuit also decided that nuclear power plant employees were not entitled to pay for donning and doffing their protective gear and going through security because the activities were “relatively effortless”.
• But in Tyson Foods Inc. v. De Ascencio, the Third Circuit decided poultry plant employees should be paid for time spend donning an doffing protective gear.

On June 9, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals in all three cases, thereby letting the three (apparently contradictory) rulings stand.

So what should you do? Well, if you want to be very safe, you could just go ahead and pay for the time. But either way, best advice is to consult with a qualified employment-law attorney, cross your fingers and hope for the Supreme Court to decide to clarify the situation soon.

Related Posts

• Donning and Doffing, Revisited
• Griping versus “Filing”
• Making the Case (Again) for Time and Attendance Tracking
• I Did Not Know That!

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