Alvarez

Perhaps the packing plant employees in Pasco, Washington, should have heeded Henry David Thoreau’s warning to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” The central dispute in this class action lawsuit is whether IBP, Inc. (“IBP”) should be required to compensate its employees for the time it takes to change into required specialized protective clothing and safety gear. Under the circumstances presented by this case, we conclude that it must. We affirm in part and reverse in part.

I

From the time that publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle provoked Pres *898 ident Theodore Roosevelt to secure passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, the meat packing industry has been one of the most regulated businesses in the United States. This is not only a product of concerns over food purity. According to the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment at a packing plant is still one of the most dangerous jobs in America, with multiple thousands of workers injured on the job every year. See U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Industry Injury and Illness Data (2002), at http://www.bls.gov/iiiyoshsum.htm.

IBP, Inc. is the…