A Kansas University professor says a pending lawsuit against Tyson Foods Inc. regarding its plant in western Kansas sheds light on typical labor abuses in the meatpacking industry.

More than 500 workers at Tyson’s plant in Holcomb – the vast majority of them Latino – are suing the company, seeking payment for the time each day they spend putting on and removing protective equipment that can include safety boots and jumpsuits, hairnets, face nets, hard hats, aprons, and hand and arm protection.

Employees must arrive at the Tyson plant and put on the equipment before starting their shifts, but they’re not paid for the time it takes to get dressed and walk from the changing room to the production floor, or the time it takes to remove the gear at the end of the day, the suit alleges.

“They’re essentially getting work out of employees and not paying for it. It can be as much as 10 or 15 minutes per day,” said KU anthropologist Don Stull, who authored a book on the meatpacking industry and has studied it for two decades. “It is one more way that the meatpacking industry exploits its workers.”

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said he wasn’t surprised by Stull’s comments, given that Stull historically has been critical of the industry.

“We are already paying for time taken to put on and take off certain items of clothing before and after shifts and breaks at the Holcomb, Kansas, plant and have been since the late 1990s when we resolved a wage and hour matter with the U.S. Department of Labor,” Mickelson said.

Mickelson pointed out that Tyson recently won a similar lawsuit in Pennsylvania, where a jury found that the so-called “donning and doffing” time does not qualify as work. However, the company settled a similar case earlier this year related to its Pasco, Wash., plant, causing some former workers to receive checks for five figures.

The workers at the Holcomb plant are represented by George Hanson of Kansas City, a Lawrence native whose father, Allan Hanson, is a colleague of Stull’s in the anthropology department.

“The time has come for Tyson to comply with the law and properly compensate these workers who perform some of our nation’s most dangerous factory jobs under the most difficult conditions imaginable,” Hanson said at the time the suit was filed this spring.

He cited a unanimous November 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision, “IBP Inc. v. Alvarez,” that found meat plant workers had to be paid for time spent “donning and doffing” and for walking from dressing areas to the production floor. Tyson officials say these kinds of lawsuits are the result of vague federal labor regulations.

Even if workers prevail in the Holcomb case, Stull said he was not optimistic about the prospects of long-term reform.

“These kinds of suits have been brought before. They have been won by workers before, but it has not dramatically changed the way the industry does business,” Stull said. “Tyson has a plant in Emporia. It has a plant in all sorts of other places.

“If the case is won : it will provide compensation for workers who were covered during that period, if you can find them. But that doesn’t mean Tyson will necessarily change what it does in Emporia.”