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 546US1

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Cite as: 546 U. S. 21 (2005)

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Opinion of the Court

I As enacted in 1938, the FLSA, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq., required employers engaged in the production of goods for commerce to pay their employees a minimum wage of “not less than 25 cents an hour,” § 6(a)(1), 52 Stat. 1062, and pro­ hibited the employment of any person for workweeks in ex­ cess of 40 hours after the second year following the legisla­ tion “unless such employee receives compensation for his employment in excess of [40] hours. . . at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed,” id., § 7(a)(3), at 1063. Neither “work” nor “workweek” is deﬁned in the statute.1 Our early cases deﬁned those terms broadly. In Tennes­ see Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U. S. 590 (1944), we held that time spent traveling from iron ore mine portals to underground working areas was compensa­ ble; relying on the remedial purposes of the statute and Web­ ster’s Dictionary, we described “work or employment” as “physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued neces­ sarily and primarily for the beneﬁt of the employer and his business.” Id., at 598; see id., at 598, n. 11. The same year, in Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U. S. 126 (1944), we clari­ ﬁed that “exertion” was not in fact necessary for an activity to constitute “work” under the FLSA. We pointed out that “an employer, if he chooses, may hire a man to do nothing, or to do nothing but wait for something to happen.” Id., at 133. Two years later, in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U. S. 680 (1946), we deﬁned “the statutory work­ week” to “includ[e] all time during which an employee is nec­ essarily required to be on the employer’s premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace.” Id., at 690–691. Accord­ 1

The most pertinent deﬁnition provides: “ ‘Employ’ includes to suffer or permit to work.” 52 Stat. 1060, 29 U. S. C. § 203(g).