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IBP, INC. v. ALVAREZ Syllabus as well as the attendant walking and waiting times. Barber prevailed on the walking and waiting claims. On appeal, the First Circuit found those times’ preliminary and postliminary activities excluded from FLSA coverage by §§ 4(a)(1) and (2) of the Portal-to-Portal Act.
Held: 1. The time respondents in No. 03–1238 spend walking between changing and production areas is compensable under the FLSA. Pp. 30–37. (a) Section 4(a)(1)’s text does not exclude such time from the FLSA’s scope. IBP claims that, because donning is not the “principal activity” that starts the workday, walking occurring immediately after donning and immediately before doffing is not compensable. That argu ment, which in effect asks for a third category of activities—those that are “integral and indispensable” to a “principal activity” and thus not excluded from coverage by § 4(a)(2), but are not themselves “principal activities” as defined by § 4(a)(1)—is foreclosed by Steiner, which made clear that § 4 does not remove activities that are “integral and indispen sable” to “principal activities” from FLSA coverage precisely because such activities are themselves “principal activities.” 350 U. S., at 253. There is no plausible argument that these terms mean different things in § 4(a)(2) and in § 4(a)(1). Under the normal rule of statutory inter pretation, identical words used in different parts of the same statute are generally presumed to have the same meaning; and in § 4(a)(2)’s reference to “said principal activity or activities,” “said” is an explicit reference to the use of the identical term in § 4(a)(1). Pp. 33–34. (b) Also unpersuasive is IBP’s argument that Congress’ repudiation of the Anderson holding reflects a purpose to exclude the walking time at issue. That time, which occurs after the workday begins and before it ends, is more comparable to time spent walking between two different positions on an assembly line than to the walking in Anderson, which occurred before the workday began. Pp. 34–35. (c) The relevant regulations also support this view of walking. Contrary to IBP’s claim, 29 CFR § 790.6 does not strictly define the workday’s limits as the period from “whistle to whistle. ” And § 790.7(g), n. 49, which provides that postdonning walking time is not “necessarily” excluded from § 4(a)(1)’s scope, does not mean that such time is always excluded and is insufficient to overcome clear statements in the regulations’ text that support the holding here. Pp. 35–37. 2. Because donning and doffing gear that is “integral and indispensa ble” to employees’ work is a “principal activity” under the statute, the continuous workday rule mandates that the time the No. 04–66 petition
