Is Security Screening and Putting On Gear Paid Time?

Many workers spend minutes before or after their shifts waiting in security lines or putting on and taking off protective equipment. Whether that time is paid depends on federal law, court decisions and sometimes state law or a union contract. This guide explains the rules and walks through an example.

The short answer

Under federal law, time spent going through a security screening before or after your shift is generally not paid time, but time spent putting on and taking off required protective gear can be. The difference comes from the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 and from several Supreme Court decisions that interpret it. The Act excludes from compensable work two categories of activities: traveling to and from the place where you perform your principal activities, and activities that are preliminary or postliminary to those principal activities. An activity falls back into paid time only if it is an "integral and indispensable" part of the principal activities.

The legal framework in four steps

1. Start with your principal activities: the main work you are employed to do, such as assembling products, treating patients or running a machine.
2. Ask whether an activity before or after it is only preliminary or postliminary, such as waiting in line to enter, walking to the building or being screened. Those are generally not compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act.
3. Ask whether the activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities. If it is tied to the productive work and you cannot dispense with it to do the job, it counts as a principal activity itself. The Department of Labor's regulations at 29 CFR Part 790 describe this test.
4. Once the first principal activity of the day begins, the continuous workday rule generally makes the time until the last principal activity compensable, including walking between locations and waiting during the day, but not bona fide meal periods.

What the Supreme Court has said

Security screening

In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, workers at a warehouse that filled online orders had to pass through an anti-theft screening at the end of each shift, which the workers said could take up to 25 minutes. The Court unanimously held that the screening was not compensable under the FLSA. The reasoning was that the screening was not the principal activity the workers were employed to do, which was retrieving products and packing them, and it was not an intrinsic element of those activities that the workers could not do without. The employer's decision to require screening for its own reasons, to prevent theft, did not make it integral to the job.

That decision is about the federal FLSA. Some states use a broader test. For example, the California Supreme Court held in 2020 that time spent waiting for and undergoing employer-required exit searches of bags and devices was compensable under California law because employees were subject to the employer's control. If you work in a state with its own rule, check your state's labor department and wage orders, because the answer may be different.

Putting on and taking off protective gear

Gear is where the outcome often changes. If your employer or the law requires specific protective equipment that you cannot do your job without, and the equipment is needed because of the nature of the work, donning and doffing it is typically a principal activity under the Steiner and Alvarez line of cases. Examples include protective suits in a food processing or chemical plant, cut-resistant gear, lead aprons and clean-room garments that must be worn at the workplace. Time to put on ordinary items that you are free to wear at home, such as a uniform shirt, is more likely to be treated as preliminary, particularly if you are allowed to change at home.

Section 203(o) of the FLSA adds a special rule. Time spent changing clothes or washing at the start or end of the day can be excluded from compensable time if there is a custom or practice under a bona fide collective bargaining agreement. In Sandifer, the Supreme Court held that "clothes" means items that are both designed and used to cover the body, which can include some protective garments, but not things like safety glasses or earplugs. Under a union contract, then, some gear time may be unpaid even though it would otherwise be work.

The continuous workday and the de minimis rule

If putting on gear is the first principal activity of your day, your paid workday starts at that moment, even if the time clock starts later. Walking from the locker room to the production line and back is then compensable, as is waiting between principal activities, because it falls within the continuous workday. The time you spend waiting in line to reach the locker room before you start to put on gear is not counted.

The Department of Labor's regulation at 29 CFR 785.47 and the Supreme Court's decision in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery (1946) recognize a de minimis exception. Insubstantial or insignificant periods beyond scheduled working hours that cannot as a practical matter be precisely recorded may be disregarded. Courts apply it only to small amounts, usually seconds or a very few minutes, and not to regular, measurable periods like 10 or 15 minutes a day. See time clock rounding for how rounding differs from this rule.

A worked example

An employee at a meat-processing plant earns $22.00 an hour. The time clock starts when the production line starts. The employee must put on a protective apron, sleeves and gloves 6 minutes before the line starts and take them off and clean them 6 minutes after the line stops, a total of 12 minutes a day. The employee is paid for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. If the gear time is a compensable principal activity, the employee actually works 12 minutes more a day, or 1 hour a week. Because the paid hours already reach 40, the extra hour is overtime, owed at 1.5 × $22.00 = $33.00. Over 50 weeks, the shortfall is 50 × $33.00 = $1,650.00. Use the Overtime Pay Calculator to test your own numbers, and the minutes to decimal hours chart to convert minutes, since 12 minutes is 0.20 hours.

How to protect yourself

• Write down when you arrive, when you start putting on required gear, when you actually start work and when you finish. The Weekly Time Card Calculator can total real times.
• Note why the gear is required: an employer rule, a safety regulation or the nature of the work.
• Find out whether your workplace has a union contract that addresses changing time, and read the pay terms.
• Compare your records with the hours on each pay stub; see how to read a pay stub.
• Raise questions with payroll in writing. For disputes, you can contact the Wage and Hour Division or your state labor agency.

For a broader look at what the law counts as paid time, including breaks, travel and training, read what counts as hours worked. For meal period rules, see unpaid lunch break rules.

This guide is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Labor laws vary by state and change over time. Confirm your specific situation with your employer, HR department, or the U.S. Department of Labor.