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4 

SANDIFER v. UNITED STATES STEEL CORP. 

Opinion of the Court 

workweek  includes  all  time  during  which  an  employee  is
necessarily  required  to  be  on  the  employer’s  premises,  on
duty or at a prescribed workplace.”  Id., at 690–691.  That 
period,  Anderson  explained,  encompassed  time  spent
“pursu[ing]  certain  preliminary  activities  after  arriving
. . . , such as putting on aprons and overalls [and] remov-
ing shirts.”  Id., at 692–693.  “These activities,” the Court 
declared, “are clearly work” under the Act.  Id., at 693. 

Organized  labor  seized  on  the  Court’s  expansive  con-
struction  of  compensability  by  filing  what  became  known
as “portal” actions (a reference to the “portals” or entranc-
es  to  mines,  at  which  workers  put  on  their  gear).
“PORTAL PAY SUITS EXCEED A BILLION,” announced 
a newspaper headline in late 1946.  N. Y. Times, Dec. 29, 
1946,  p.  1.   Stating  that  the  Fair  Labor  Standards  Act
had  been  “interpreted  judicially  in  disregard  of  long-
established  customs,  practices,  and  contracts  between 
employers and employees,” Congress responded by passing 
the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 84, as amended, 
29 U. S. C. §251 et seq. (2006 ed. and Supp. V).  §251(a).

The Portal-to-Portal Act limited the scope of employers’ 
liability  in  various  ways.    As  relevant  here,  it  excluded 
from mandatorily compensable time 

“activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to
[the] principal activity or activities [that an employee 
is  employed  to  perform],  which  occur  either  prior  to 
the  time  on  any  particular  workday  at  which  such
employee  commences,  or  subsequent  to  the  time  on 
any particular workday at which he ceases, such prin-
cipal  activity  or  activities.”    61  Stat.  87,  29  U. S. C. 
§254(a)(2). 

The  Department  of  Labor  promulgated  a  regulation
explaining that the Portal-to-Portal Act did not alter what 
is  known  as  the  “continuous  workday  rule,”  under  which
compensable  time  comprises  “the  period  between  the