Glossary · Wage & Hour

Donning and Doffing: When Time Spent on Protective Gear Must Be Paid

By Steve Levine · Updated July 2, 2026 · 7 min read

Quick Answer

Donning and doffing is the time workers spend putting on (“donning”) and taking off (“doffing”) required protective gear, uniforms, or equipment before and after shifts. Under the FLSA, that time must be paid when the gear is integral and indispensable to the worker's principal activities (Steiner v. Mitchell), and under IBP v. Alvarez the walking time after the first compensable gear-up is paid too. One big exception: FLSA § 203(o) lets a union collective bargaining agreement make “changing clothes” time unpaid (Sandifer v. U.S. Steel). These claims are a staple of wage class actions in meatpacking, poultry, chemical, and healthcare workplaces.

What Donning and Doffing Means

“Donning” is putting on; “doffing” is taking off. In wage-and-hour law the pair refers to the daily ritual at the edges of a shift: changing into sanitary smocks, steel-toed boots, hard hats, cut-resistant gloves, chain-mail aprons, respirators, hospital PPE, or chemical suits — then reversing it all at day's end, often with required washing in between. At a few minutes per end of shift, gear time looks trivial. Multiplied across two gear-ups and two gear-downs a day, hundreds of workers, and years of pay periods, it becomes the kind of systematic unpaid time that drives major wage and hour class actions — a close cousin of general off-the-clock work claims.

The Portal-to-Portal Act Backdrop

The starting point is the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, which Congress passed to cabin an expansive reading of the FLSA. It provides that employers need not pay for two categories of time: (1) traveling to and from the actual place where the employee performs their principal activities, and (2) activities that are preliminary or postliminary to those principal activities. Ordinary commuting is out; so is time that merely brackets the job.

Everything in donning-and-doffing law turns on the line between an unpaid “preliminary” task and a paid principal activity. The Supreme Court has held that “principal activities” include everything that is an integral and indispensable part of those activities — which is where the gear comes in.

The Integral-and-Indispensable Test — Steiner v. Mitchell

The foundational case is Steiner v. Mitchell (1956). Workers in a battery plant handled caustic and toxic materials — lead and sulfuric acid — and had to change into protective clothing before work and shower and change again after. The Supreme Court held that this changing and washing time was compensable because it was integral and indispensable to the principal activity of making batteries: the job could not be performed safely without it.

The test that emerged asks whether the gear-up is intrinsic to the work and something the employee cannot dispense with if they are to perform the job. Donning a sanitary smock and cut-resistant gloves on a slaughterhouse line passes the test. Changing into a generic uniform that could just as well be put on at home, for the employee's own convenience, generally does not. Between those poles lies most of the litigation — item-by-item fights over whether hard hats, ear plugs, or safety glasses are “integral” or merely generic.

Walking and Waiting Time — IBP v. Alvarez

The next question: once the gear-up is paid, what about the walk from the locker room to the production floor? In IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez (2005) — a case out of a meat-processing plant — the Supreme Court answered with the continuous workday doctrine. Once an employee performs their first principal activity of the day, the workday has begun, and the Portal-to-Portal Act no longer excludes what follows. So if donning required protective gear is compensable, the walking time after it is compensable too, all the way through to the last principal activity of the day (including the doffing at the end).

The Court drew one line in the other direction: time spent waiting to don the gear — standing in line at the equipment window before the first principal activity — is preliminary and generally not compensable. The sequencing matters enormously in plant cases, because a compensable first activity drags long chains of walking, waiting, and staging time into the paid workday.

The § 203(o) Union Carve-Out — Sandifer

There is a significant exception for unionized workplaces. FLSA § 203(o) provides that time spent “changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday” may be excluded from paid time by the express terms of, or by custom and practice under, a bona fide collective bargaining agreement. In other words, a union and an employer can bargain clothes-changing time away.

How far that reaches was settled in Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. (2014). Steelworkers argued their flame-retardant jackets, pants, hoods, and related gear were “equipment,” not “clothes,” so § 203(o) could not cover them. The Supreme Court disagreed for most items, reading “changing clothes” to cover items designed and used to cover the body, even protective ones — while acknowledging that true equipment like glasses, ear plugs, and respirators is different, and that a workday spent mostly donning genuine equipment would fall outside the carve-out. The practical upshot: in a § 203(o) workplace, gear time that would otherwise be paid can lawfully be unpaid, which is why the same smock can be compensable in a non-union plant and uncompensated across the street.

The Classic Industries — and How Cases Get Built

Donning-and-doffing litigation grew up in meatpacking and poultry processing, where sanitary and safety rules make elaborate gear mandatory and thousands of workers repeat the identical routine every shift. Chemical plants, steel and heavy manufacturing, and healthcare settings — where staff don gowns, gloves, masks, and respirators — round out the classic list. Because the claim rises or falls on a common policy applied to everyone, these cases fit naturally into FLSA collective actions and state-law classes, with damages built from time studies of the gear-up routine.

The sums involved are not small: OCA's coverage includes the $200.2 million beef and pork processing wage settlement, resolving pay claims by processing-plant workers — claims the defendants resolved without admitting wrongdoing. Recoveries in these cases are typically distributed pro rata, weighted by weeks or shifts worked during the class period. Related theories — unpaid pre-shift work and time clock rounding — often travel in the same complaint, since a plant that doesn't pay for gear time frequently has other edges of the shift unpaid too.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does donning and doffing mean?

Donning means putting on, and doffing means taking off. In wage law, the phrase refers to the time workers spend putting on and removing required protective gear, uniforms, or equipment before and after shifts — smocks, steel-toed boots, hard hats, sanitary gear, chain-mail aprons, respirators, and similar items. The legal question is whether that time counts as paid work time.

When is donning and doffing time paid?

When the gear is integral and indispensable to the worker's principal activities — meaning the job cannot be performed safely or effectively without it. That is the rule from Steiner v. Mitchell (1956), where battery-plant workers had to be paid for changing into protective clothing and showering because of toxic chemical exposure. Changing that is merely for the worker's own convenience, like putting on an ordinary uniform at home, is generally not compensable.

Is walking time after gearing up paid?

Generally yes. In IBP v. Alvarez (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court held that once a worker performs their first principal activity of the day — which includes compensable donning of required gear — the continuous workday has begun, so the time spent walking from the changing area to the production floor must be paid. Time spent waiting to don the gear in the first place, by contrast, was held not compensable.

What is the § 203(o) union carve-out?

Section 203(o) of the FLSA allows time spent "changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday" to be excluded from paid time by the express terms of, or by custom and practice under, a bona fide collective bargaining agreement. In Sandifer v. U.S. Steel (2014), the Supreme Court read "changing clothes" to include items like flame-retardant jackets, pants, and hoods, so a union contract could lawfully make that changing time unpaid. The carve-out only applies in unionized workplaces with such an agreement or practice.

Which industries see the most donning-and-doffing lawsuits?

Meatpacking and poultry processing are the classics — workers gear up in extensive sanitary and protective equipment every shift, and the case law grew out of those plants. Chemical plants, steel and manufacturing facilities, and healthcare settings where workers must put on PPE such as gowns, gloves, and respirators also generate these claims. Because everyone in a plant follows the same gear-up routine, the claims fit naturally into class and collective actions.

Related Terms

About This Page

General legal-information about donning-and-doffing claims, not legal advice. OpenClassActions.com is a consumer news site and is not a law firm or a settlement administrator. Whether particular gear-up time is compensable depends on the specific gear, the job, any collective bargaining agreement, and the state — and the case law continues to develop. For the controlling federal rules, see the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Portal-to-Portal Act, and the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. If you think your gear time went unpaid, consult a qualified employment attorney in your jurisdiction.

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