On Monday, January 27, 2014, in unanimously affirming the Seventh Circuit’s judgment in favor of U.S. Steel Corporation in Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., the Supreme Court forged a middle ground on the meaning of the term “changing clothes” in section 3(o) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The outcome of this case will have a significant impact on unionized employers in a wide variety of industries where workers change in and out of protective and/or sanitary clothing at the start and end of their workdays, including food processing, light and heavy industrial manufacturing, chemical processing, energy production and health care. However, the Supreme Court’s opinion also leaves some unanswered questions on the compensability of clothes changing under section 3(o).
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