Opinion ID: $opinion_id
Heading Depth: 1.0
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: $label

Text: The regulations adopted by the Secretary of Labor in 1947 support respondents' view that when donning and doffing of protective gear are compensable activities, they may also define the outer limits of the workday. Under those regulations, the few minutes spent walking between the locker rooms and the production area are similar to the time spent walking between two different workplaces on the disassembly line. See 29 CFR § 790.7(c) (2005) (explaining that the Portal-to-Portal Act does not affect the compensability of time spent traveling from the place of performance of one principal activity to that of another). See also § 785.38 (explaining, in a later regulation interpreting the FLSA, that "[w]here an employee is required to report at a meeting place to receive instructions or to perform other work there, or to pick up and to carry tools, the travel from the designated place to the work place is part of the day's work, and must be counted as hours worked ...").

IBP argues, however, that two provisions in the regulations point to a different conclusion_x0097_the use of the phrase "whistle to whistle" in discussing the limits of the "workday," § 790.6, and a footnote stating that postchanging walking time is not "necessarily" excluded from the scope of § 4(a)(1), § 790.7(g), n. 49.

The "whistle to whistle" reference does reflect the view that in most situations the workday will be defined by the beginning and ending of the primary productive activity. But the relevant text describes the workday as "roughly the period `from whistle to whistle.'" § 790.6(a) (emphasis added). Indeed, the next subsection of this same regulation states: "`Workday' as used in the Portal Act means, in general, the period between the commencement and completion on the same workday of an employee's principal activity or activities." § 790.6(b). IBP's emphasis on the "whistle to whistle" reference is unavailing.

The footnote on which IBP relies states:

"Washing up after work, like the changing of clothes, may in certain situations be so directly related to the specific work the employee is employed to perform that it would be regarded as an integral part of the employee's `principal activity.' This does not necessarily mean, however, that travel between the washroom or clothes-changing place and the actual place of performance of the specific work the employee is employed to perform, would be excluded from the type of travel to which section 4(a) refers." § 790.7(g), n. 49 (emphasis added; citations omitted).
This footnote does indicate that the Secretary assumed that there would be some cases in which walking between a locker room where the employee performs her first principal activity and the production line would be covered by the FLSA and some cases in which it would not be. That assumption is, of course, inconsistent with IBP's submission that such walking is always excluded by § 4(a), just as it is inconsistent with respondents' view that such walking is never excluded. Whatever the correct explanation for the Secretary's ambiguous (and apparently ambivalent) statement may be, it is not sufficient to overcome the clear statements in the text of the regulations that support our holding. And it surely is not sufficient to overcome the statute itself, whose meaning is definitively resolved by Steiner.

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that any activity that is "integral and indispensable" to a "principal activity" is itself a "principal activity" under § 4(a) of the Portal-to-Portal Act. Moreover, during a continuous workday, any walking time that occurs after the beginning of the employee's first principal activity and before the end of the employee's last principal activity is excluded from the scope of that provision, and as a result is covered by the FLSA.