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Page Number: 10.0

8 

INTEGRITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, INC. v. BUSK 

Opinion of the Court 

Opinion Letter the Department issued in 1951.  The letter 
found  noncompensable  a  preshift  security  search  of  em-
ployees  in  a  rocket-powder  plant  “ ‘for  matches,  spark
producing  devices  such  as  cigarette  lighters,  and  other 
items  which  have  a  direct  bearing  on  the  safety  of  the 
employees,’ ”  as  well  as  a  postshift  security  search  of  the 
employees  done  “ ‘for  the  purpose  of  preventing  theft.’ ”  
Opinion Letter from Dept. of Labor, Wage and Hour Div.,
to  Dept.  of  Army,  Office  of  Chief  of  Ordnance  (Apr.  18,
1951), pp. 1–2 (available in Clerk of Court’s case file).  The 
Department  drew  no  distinction  between  the  searches 
conducted  for  the  safety  of  the  employees  and  those  con-
ducted  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  theft—neither  were
compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act. 

B 
The  Court  of  Appeals  erred  by  focusing  on  whether  an
employer required a particular activity.  The integral and
indispensable  test  is  tied  to  the  productive  work  that  the 
employee is employed to perform.  See, e.g., IBP, 546 U. S., 
at  42;  Mitchell,  supra,  at  262;  Steiner,  350  U. S.,  at  249– 
251;  see  also  29  CFR  §790.8(a)  (explaining  that  the  term 
“principal  activities”  was  “considered  sufficiently  broad  to
embrace  within  its  terms  such  activities  as  are  indispen-
sable  to  the  performance  of  productive  work”  (internal 
quotation  marks  omitted;  emphasis  added));  §790.8(c) 
(“Among  the  activities  included  as  an  integral  part  of  a 
principal activity are those closely related activities which
are indispensable to its performance” (emphasis added)).

If  the  test  could  be  satisfied  merely  by  the  fact  that  an
employer required an activity, it would sweep into “princi-
pal  activities”  the  very  activities  that  the  Portal-to-Portal
Act  was  designed  to  address.    The  employer  in  Anderson, 
for  instance,  required  its  employees  to  walk  “from  a
timeclock  near  the  factory  gate  to  a  workstation”  so  that 
they  could  “begin  their  work,”  “but  it  is  indisputable  that