546US1
Unit: $$U5
[08-22-08 13:38:19] PAGES PGT: OPIN
Cite as: 546 U. S. 21 (2005)
37
Opinion of the Court
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 as sumption 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) state ment may be, it is not sufficient to overcome the clear state ments 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 it self 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 provi sion, and as a result is covered by the FLSA. III Respondent in No. 04–66, Barber Foods, Inc. (Barber), op erates a poultry processing plant in Portland, Maine, that employs about 300 production workers. These employees operate six production lines and perform a variety of tasks that require different combinations of protective clothing. They are paid by the hour from the time they punch in to computerized timeclocks located at the entrances to the pro duction floor. Petitioners are Barber employees and former employees who brought this action to recover compensation for alleged
