Employees from two chicken processing plants brought a class action suit against their employer, charging that the time they spent putting on protective gear at the start of their shifts and removing it at shift’s end should be paid time.

What happened. Production line employees at Mountaire Farms, Inc. must put on smocks, steel-toed rubber boots, plastic helmets called “bump caps,” gloves, and other items—and then sanitize that gear—before moving to the production lines. The workers also doff their gear before unpaid meal breaks and then put it all back on to go back to the lines. Mountaire slaughters, debones, and otherwise prepares chickens and chicken parts for market.

When the employees first lodged their legal suit, claiming pay for all time spent donning and doffing, they were required to dump their smocks into dirty clothes hampers and pick up clean ones the following day. Mountaire then announced that employees could take their smocks home with them if they preferred. Since workers saw no advantage at all in this change, no one took smocks home, and the class continued its lawsuit.

In 2009, a federal district court judge found primarily for the workers. Mountaire appealed to the 4th Circuit, which covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

What the court said. Before appellate judges, employees presented the testimony of an expert witness, who had filmed them as they donned and doffed the protective gear. He reported with a statistical level of confidence that these activities took more than 20 minutes per employee per day at shift start and end—not “de minimus” time under Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). According to the FLSA, judges ruled that donning and doffing are “integral and indispensable part[s] of the [employee’s] principal activities” and are therefore compensable.

Having decided a case in 2009 against employees seeking to be paid for doffing and donning for meal breaks, they ruled that precedent had been set and denied Mountaire workers’ claims for those activities. They also held that the employer’s policies were not a “willful” violation of the law, so employees will get only 2 years’ back pay and no liquidated damages. Perez et al. v. Mountaire Farms, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, No. 09-1917 (6/7/11).

Point to remember: Judges said, in effect, that if they had it to do over again, they would have ruled to pay employees to prepare for their meal break and then re-don their gear—presumably another 20+ minutes of work every day.