Continuing the recently established practice of issuing broadly applicable “Administrator Interpretations” in lieu of wage and hour opinion letters, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Deputy Administrator Nancy Leppink has released the second Administrator Interpretation of 2010. The interpretation, issued June 16, clarifies the definition of “clothes” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), addressing some inconsistency among prior opinion letters and case law on the topic of donning and doffing protective equipment.

Specifically, the FLSA provides that time spent “changing clothes” at the beginning of the workday isn’t considered compensable time; however, there had been a difference of opinion as to whether “clothes” also included mandatory protective equipment required in some industries — for example, meatpacking and processing. In Administrator’s Interpretation No. 2010-2, Deputy Administrator Leppink examined the FLSA’s statutory language and legislative history to determine that “clothes” refers to apparel, not to mandatory protective equipment such as face shields, sanitary and safety equipment, protective gloves, and arm and belly guards. That means employees who are required by safety laws to don and doff protective gear must be compensated for the time it takes to do so.

The text of the Administrator Interpretation may be found at: www.dol.gov/whd/opinion/adminIntrprtn/FLSA/2010/FLSAAI2010_2.pdf.

About Holly Jones: Holly Jones, Managing Attorney Editor at BLR, has written and edited countless alerts, articles, newsletters, and manuals on various topics of labor and employment law. She is the editor of HR Guide to Employment Law: A Practical Compliance Reference, Fifty Employment Laws in Fifty States, and Employers State Law Alert, and she also serves as MLSP's in-house wage and hour expert, managing related products such as Wage & Hour Compliance: Practical Solutions for HR. Holly is a graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School and a licensed attorney in the state of Tennessee.