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Text: Petitioner in No. 03-1238, IBP, Inc. (IBP), is a large producer of fresh beef, pork, and related products. At its plant in Pasco, Washington, it employs approximately 178 workers in 113 job classifications in the slaughter division and 800 line workers in 145 job classifications in the processing division. All production workers in both divisions must wear outer garments, hardhats, hairnets, earplugs, gloves, sleeves, aprons, leggings, and boots. Many of them, particularly those who use knives, must also wear a variety of protective equipment for their hands, arms, torsos, and legs; this gear includes chain link metal aprons, vests, plexiglass armguards, and special gloves. IBP requires its employees to store their equipment and tools in company locker rooms, where most of them don their protective gear.

Production workers' pay is based on the time spent cutting and bagging meat. Pay begins with the first piece of meat and ends with the last piece of meat. Since 1998, however, IBP has also paid for four minutes of clothes-changing time.[4] In 1999, respondents, IBP employees, filed this class action to recover compensation for preproduction and postproduction work, including the time spent donning and doffing protective gear and walking between the locker rooms and the production floor before and after their assigned shifts.

After a lengthy bench trial, the District Court for the Eastern District of Washington held that donning and doffing of protective gear that was unique to the jobs at issue were compensable under the FLSA because they were integral and indispensable to the work of the employees who wore such equipment. Moreover, consistent with the continuous workday rule, the District Court concluded that, for those employees required to don and doff unique protective gear, the walking time between the locker room and the production floor was also compensable because it occurs during the workday.[5] The court did not, however, allow any recovery for ordinary clothes changing and washing, or for the "donning and doffing of hard hat[s], ear plugs, safety glasses, boots [or] hairnet[s]." App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 03-1238, p. 65a.

The District Court proceeded to apply these legal conclusions in making detailed factual findings with regard to the different groups of employees. For example, the District Court found that, under its view of what was covered by the FLSA, processing division knife users were entitled to compensation for between 12 and 14 minutes of preproduction and postproduction work, including 3.3 to 4.4 minutes of walking time.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court's ultimate conclusions on these issues, but in part for different reasons. 339 F.3d 894 (CA9 2003). After noting that the question whether activities "`are an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities'" within the meaning of Steiner is "context specific," 339 F.3d, at 902, the Court of Appeals endorsed the distinction between the burdensome donning and doffing of elaborate protective gear, on the one hand, and the time spent donning and doffing nonunique gear such as hardhats and safety goggles, on the other. It did so not because donning and doffing nonunique gear are categorically excluded from being "principal activities" as defined by the Portal-to-Portal Act, but rather because, in the context of this case, the time employees spent donning and doffing nonunique protective gear was "`de minimis as a matter of law.'" Id., at 904.

IBP does not challenge the holding below that, in light of Steiner, the donning and doffing of unique protective gear are "principal activities" under § 4 of the Portal-to-Portal Act. Moreover, IBP has not asked us to overrule Steiner. Considerations of stare decisis are particularly forceful in the area of statutory construction, especially when a unanimous interpretation of a statute has been accepted as settled law for several decades. Thus, the only question for us to decide is whether the Court of Appeals correctly rejected IBP's contention that the walking between the locker rooms and the production areas is excluded from FLSA coverage by § 4(a)(1) of the Portal-to-Portal Act.

IBP argues that the text of § 4(a)(1), the history and purpose of its enactment, and the Department of Labor's interpretive guidance compel the conclusion that the Portal-to-Portal Act excludes this walking time from the scope of the FLSA. We find each of these arguments unpersuasive.