Skateboarding Employee Responsible for Damage to Uniform

True, this situation doesn’t come up every day, but it’s still worth a brief post. I mean, when skateboarding and work collide, one never knows what the outcome might be.

A minimum wage employee repeatedly damaged his employer-provided uniforms by skateboarding during off-duty time. This led to an obvious question: Does the employer have to reimburse a minimum wage employee for the cost of replacing an employer-provided uniform under these circumstances?

According to a recent Opinion Letter from the Wage-Hour Division of the Department of Labor, if an employer provides a minimum wage employee with a sufficient number of uniforms to use during work, at the employer’s expense, and if the employer replaces uniforms that are worn out due to normal wear and tear or are damaged in the course of job performance, it need not replace uniforms damaged by an employee during non-work-related activities engaged in by the employee while off duty.

And there’s more. If the employer provides a sufficient number of uniforms and if the employee wants to purchase additional uniforms beyond those supplied by the employer, the employer may collect cash for the extra uniforms or make deductions from the employee’s pay without violating the minimum wage provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act.