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Take your work clothes off for pay? Supreme Court to decide

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//October 5, 2015//

Take your work clothes off for pay? Supreme Court to decide

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//October 5, 2015//

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is poised to decide whether state law requires union employees of a Beloit food production plant be paid for the time it takes the employees to put on the gear and clothing required for work.

The court heard oral arguments Monday from both parties in the case, with Milwaukee attorneys Thomas Krukowski of Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek SC arguing for Hormel, and Mark Sweet of Sweet and Associates LLC arguing on behalf of United Food, the employees’ union.

The case before the court stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by 330 hourly union workers at Hormel Corp.’s plant in Beloit. Workers at the plant are required to wear a uniform, hard hat and other gear such as earplugs.

The workers allege that the clothing and gear must be “donned and doffed,” or put on and removed, while they are clocked out, and that some workers end up working more than 40 hours a week because of Hormel’s policies.

If Hormel were to pay for the roughly two minutes it takes to put on and remove the gear, it amounts to about $500 per employee per year, said Krukowski.

He argued, based on a previous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, that the donning and doffing of the clothing was not “integral” or “indispensable” to the primary work employees did at the plant, so Hormel need not pay the employees for the time. And by doing so, he argued, the court must then overturn the Court of Appeals decision in Weissman v. Tyson Prepared Foods.

Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and David Prosser had questions about why Hormel requires specific uniforms and gear and whether Hormel has the policy because of sanitation concerns.

Sweet countered Hormel’s argument, saying that the donning and doffing is actually integral and indispensable to the Hormel employees’ jobs. The required clothing and gear, he noted, are required by state and federal laws that govern food production. Thus, Sweet said, Hormel must pay the employees for their time at the beginning of the day, end of the day, and when they decide to take their 30-minute lunch break outside of the plant.

Sweet said that if Hormel employees don’t wear the company-provided clothing and gear, they risk getting fired.

“That’s capital punishment in labor relations,” he said.

However, Bradley said if the court required Hormel to pay employees for the time it took to don and doff the clothing and gear to go on an off-site lunch break, that would appear to give employees a “perverse incentive” to have lunch offsite to get time-and-a-half pay.

A decision on the case is expected in the coming months.

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