Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp., No. 12-417; U.S. Supreme Court; opinion by Scalia, J.; decided January 27, 2014. On certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Petitioner Sandifer and others filed a putative collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, seeking back pay for time spent donning and doffing pieces of protective gear that they assert respondent U.S. Steel Corporation requires workers to wear because of hazards at its steel plants. U.S. Steel contends that this donning-and-doffing time, which would otherwise be compensable under the act, is noncompensable under a provision of its collective-bargaining agreement with petitioners’ union. That provision’s validity depends on 29 U.S.C. § 203(o), which allows parties to collectively bargain over whether “time spent in changing clothes…at the beginning or end of each workday” must be compensated. The district court granted U.S. Steel summary judgment in pertinent part, holding that petitioners’ donning and doffing constituted “changing clothes” under § 203(o). It also assumed that any time spent donning and doffing items that were not “clothes” was “de minimis” and hence noncompensable. The Seventh Circuit affirmed.
