Opinion ID: 2959795
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ingress and Egress Security Procedures

Text: The activities required to enter and exit Indian Point- -from waiting in line at the vehicle entrance through the final card-swipe and handprint analysis--are necessary in 4 In the nuclear containment area--which more closely resembles the battery plant--Indian Point employees wore specialized gear and dosimeters, and were compensated for donning and doffing. 15 the sense that they are required and serve essential purposes of security; but they are not integral to principal work activities. These security-related activities are modern paradigms of the preliminary and postliminary activities described in the Portal-to-Portal Act, in particular, travel time. The plain wording of subsection (1) of the Portal-to-Portal Act exempts from the FLSA: “walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities which such employee is employed to perform.” 29 U.S.C. § 254(a) (1); see also 29 C.F.R. § 790.7(c).5 Plaintiffs argue that the Portal-to-Portal Act was enacted when the time-consuming security measures at issue may not have been envisioned, and there is some force to the observation that security measures at sensitive facilities (and elsewhere) are becoming increasingly invasive, layered and time-consuming. But the text of the statute does not depend on the purpose of any preliminaries, or how much time such preliminaries may consume. Travel time was held to be 5 Rules may yield to particular instances. For example, passing through preliminary security procedures may be integral to the principal activity of an employee responsible for monitoring, testing and reporting on the plant’s infrastructure security. 16 “normal” (and therefore outside the FLSA) in Kavanagh v. Grand Union Co., Inc., even though the plaintiff (who performed mechanical services in defendant’s supermarkets) commuted five to nine hours a day depending on the supermarkets to which he was dispatched. 192 F.3d 269, 27273 (2d Cir. 1999). Normal travel time “does not represent an objective standard of how far most workers commute or how far they may reasonably be expected to commute. Instead, it represents a subjective standard, defined by what is usual within the confines of a particular employment relationship.” Id. at 272. By the same token, security measures that are rigorous and that lengthen the trip to the job-site do not thereby become principal activities of the employment. At Indian Point, this is easily demonstrated because the security measures at entry are required (to one degree or another) for everyone entering the plant-- regardless of what an employee does (servicing fuel rods or making canteen sandwiches)--and including visitors. See Gorman v. Entergy, No. 04 Civ. 8484 (S.D.N.Y. filed Apr. 17, 2006) (citing plaintiffs’ memorandum in opposition to defendant’s motion to dismiss). 17