The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on November 8, 2005 that the workday includes the time employees spend walking to and from changing areas where they change in and out of special protective clothing. Quentin Riegel, vice president of litigation for the National Association of Manufacturers, is disappointed in the ruling and believes that it will create the burden of additional labor costs for American manufacturers, who are already struggling to compete with cheaper overseas labor.

However, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao praised the decision and called it a victory for American low-wage workers.

The decision revolved around production employees at an IBP plant in Pasco, Washington. Production workers at the plant wear extensive protective clothing and equipment and must store their gear in company locker rooms, where they don their equipment before the begin work. IBP employees filed a class action suit to recover compensation for the time they spent donning the protective gear and walking between the locker rooms and production floor before and after their shifts.

A district court ruled that donning the special protective gear was compensable as was the walking time to and from the production floor. IBP did not challenge the ruling on payment for the time it took to don protective clothing, but they did object to the walking time compensation, arguing it was excluded from the FLSA by the Portal-to-Portal Act.

The Supreme Court ruled that the locker rooms where the special gear is stored are places of performance of principal job activities and that the time spent walking to the production floor and back to the locker room, are thus, compensable.

Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union welcomed the decision, saying workers are often spending 30 to 40 minutes a day collecting and putting on their gear and walking to their stations, time for which they were previously unpaid.

Employers will need to adjust their compensation systems to adhere to the new Court ruling.