Mercedes-Benz Factory Worker Lawsuit: Unpaid Wages for Donning & Doffing?

Attorneys working with ClassAction.org are looking into whether a class action lawsuit can be filed on behalf of certain Mercedes-Benz factory workers over potential labor law violations.

Specifically, they believe hourly employees at the automaker’s production plants may not have been properly paid for time spent “donning and doffing,” i.e., putting on and taking off, required safety equipment. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires that employees be paid for all time spent on activities that are necessary to perform their jobs, and the attorneys believe affected Mercedes-Benz factory workers could be owed unpaid overtime wages for donning and doffing time.

They’re also looking into whether Mercedes-Benz underpaid workers for their overtime hours by failing to include bonuses in their regular pay rates, which are used to calculate time-and-a-half overtime rates.

Why Might Mercedes-Benz Factory Workers Be Owed Unpaid Wages?

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees must be paid at least minimum wage for all hours worked—and time-and-a-half overtime wages when they work more than 40 hours per week.

The FLSA specifies that an employee’s working hours include all time spent performing “principal activities,” i.e., the activities the worker is “employed to perform,” and any tasks that are essential to the performance of those activities. This could include, for instance, time spent cleaning equipment, receiving instruction from a previous shift or, as in this case, donning and doffing required safety equipment.

The U.S. Department of Labor provides the following example of a situation in which donning and doffing safety gear could be considered essential to the performance of a worker’s job and therefore an activity for which they would need to be paid:

If an employee in a chemical plant cannot perform his or her principal activities without putting on certain protective clothes, changing clothes on the employer’s premises at the beginning and end of the workday would be a necessary part of the employee’s principal activities. The time spent in changing clothes would probably be hours worked.”

The FLSA also states that workers’ overtime rates must be at least one and a half times their regular pay rate. According to the Department of Labor (DOL), a worker’s regular pay rate is their average hourly rate calculated by dividing their total pay for the workweek by the number of hours they actually worked. In other words, it includes not just their base hourly rate, but any additional compensation they received during the week, with limited exceptions.

Importantly, “nondiscretionary” bonuses, which include things like attendance bonuses, safety bonuses, production bonuses and other types of extra pay meant to incentivize employees, must be included in workers’ regular pay rates when calculating their overtime rates. These types of bonuses are nondiscretionary because employees typically know about and expect them. Not including bonuses in workers’ regular pay rate calculations could cause them to be paid less for their overtime hours.

Factory Worker Unpaid Wages Lawsuits

In May 2023, a jury awarded $22 million of back wages to be paid to over 7,500 employees of a Pennsylvania battery manufacturer in a lawsuit filed by the Department of Labor (DOL).

The DOL alleged that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay workers for all hours worked, including time spent donning and doffing protective equipment and showering to reduce exposure to lead and other toxins. According to the case, the manufacturer typically only paid factory workers for their scheduled eight-hour shifts and adjusted their clock-in and clock-out times to avoid having to pay them overtime wages.

“Decades of settled law states that employers must pay employees for all hours worked, and this includes the time employees spend changing into and out of uniforms and showering where such activities, as here, were necessary and indispensable to their work,” Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said in a press release about the verdict.

At the time, the jury award amounted to the largest verdict ever obtained by the DOL under the FLSA.

A lawsuit filed in April 2021 against a plumbing system manufacturer claimed that although employees often received nondiscretionary bonuses when they met certain “objective and measurable criteria,” these bonuses were not included as part of their regular rates. As a result, the workers were underpaid for their time-and-a-half overtime hours, the lawsuit alleged.

How Could a Mercedes-Benz Lawsuit Help?

If filed and successful, a class action lawsuit against Mercedes-Benz could help factory workers recover any unpaid wages, including overtime pay. It could also force the automaker to change its pay practices and ensure that workers are properly paid for their overtime hours and time spent putting on and taking off protective gear.

What You Can Do

After you get in touch, an attorney or legal representative may reach out to you directly to ask you some questions and explain how you may be able to help get a class action lawsuit started. It doesn’t cost anything to fill out the form or speak with someone, and you’re not obligated to take legal action if you don’t want to.

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