Toyota Motor Corp. says it will pay $4.5 million in back wages to workers in Georgetown, Ky., as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case that originated with workers in a chicken processing plant.

And Toyota's announcement two weeks ago has sent other automakers scrambling to see if they, too, owe workers back wages.

At issue: The time it takes workers to put on protective clothing and get to their workstations, and whether they are paid for that time.

Robert Hitt, a spokesman for BMW Manufacturing Co. in Spartanburg, S.C., said BMW also will have to pay back wages for many of its 4,500 workers, although the amount "will be substantially less than what Toyota had to pay."

UAW spokesman Paul Krell in Detroit said that rules concerning donning protective clothing on company time are covered in local contracts. He said the court ruling will not be an issue for UAW-represented plants, a statement echoed last week by both General Motors and Ford Motor Co.

But legal departments at the domestic automakers did review their procedures after the ruling, and the Chrysler group is still assessing the matter. A Chrysler spokesman said the company might make some changes in its clock-in procedures, and does not know yet whether it will mean back wages for some U.S. assembly workers.



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Afoul of the law
The issues: Automakers are determining whether they owe back pay to workers for time spent off the clock putting on and taking off protective clothing and getting to and from work stations.
What happened: The Supreme Court decided late last year that workers at a chicken-processing plant in Maine should be putting on protective gear on the company's time.
The auto impact: Many auto workers have been suiting up on their own time, too.
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Poultry and motion
The issue stems from a case that involved feathers, not fenders. That case, decided late last year, found that meatpackers at a Maine chicken-processing plant should be compensated for time spent putting on protective clothing to do their jobs and then walking to their workstations.

The decision had immediate implications for some auto plant workers who must wear special lint-free and no-static uniforms to perform various assembly jobs.

At Toyota, several workers previously had complained to the Kentucky Department of Labor that to work in the Georgetown paint shop they had to put on special jumpsuits in a locker room, then walk to their posts -- as long as eight minutes, round trip -- before clocking in.

Nan Banks, spokeswoman for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky Inc. in Georgetown, says the company has altered its clock-in procedure to meet the court ruling and also is considering changes at its truck factory in Princeton, Ind.

She said the company had not decided whether it also will pay back wages to some workers in Princeton.

The $4.5 million payment will go to about 1,000 current and former Georgetown paint plant workers. It is capped by a five-year statute of limitations.


The long walk
The problem stemmed from the distance from the locker room to the workstations, Banks said. In some cases, Toyota workers had to walk only a minute or two. The longest round-trip walk from the locker room was eight minutes.

She said Toyota decided to calculate the payments to workers as though they had all walked the full eight minutes "just to make sure we didn't shortchange anybody."

The legal department at Nissan North America Inc., which operates plants in Tennessee and Mississippi, has reviewed its practices and determined that Nissan will not have to pay back wages, a spokeswoman said. Workers there have a seven-minute meeting before each shift. They can don protective clothing during that time.

A similar review at Honda Manufacturing of America Inc. in Marysville found its practices to be in line with the court ruling. Spokesman Ed Miller said the company uses employee lockers near each workstation for protective clothing.


Changes under way
Next week, BMW will begin allowing workers to clock in before putting on protective jumpsuits and other gear, Hitt says. He declined to say how much BMW will pay workers, but he said the amount will be decided within 60 days.

BMW was saved from a larger exposure on the case by a fluke of its plant design. When the plant opened in 1994, it had a centralized locker room for its first 2,000 employees. But when it expanded twice over the past decade, it was impossible to enlarge the locker room. So the company decentralized the lockers and added more plant entrances for workers.

"As a result of that, our people don't have a very great distance to walk after donning their protective equipment," Hitt said. "We were fortunate in that we had to change several years ago."