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[08-22-08 13:38:19] PAGES PGT: OPIN

IBP, INC. v. ALVAREZ Opinion of the Court

ingly, we held that the time necessarily spent by employees walking from timeclocks near the factory entrance gate to their workstations must be treated as part of the workweek. Id., at 691–692. The year after our decision in Anderson, Congress passed the Portal-to-Portal Act, amending certain provisions of the FLSA. Based on ﬁndings that judicial interpretations of the FLSA had superseded “long-established customs, prac­ tices, and contracts between employers and employees, thereby creating wholly unexpected liabilities, immense in amount and retroactive in operation,” 61 Stat. 84, it re­ sponded with two statutory remedies, the ﬁrst relating to “existing claims,” id., at 85–86, and the second to “future claims,” id., at 87–88. Both remedies distinguish between working time that is compensable pursuant to contract or custom and practice, on the one hand, and time that was found compensable under this Court’s expansive reading of the FLSA, on the other. Like the original FLSA, however, the Portal-to-Portal Act omits any deﬁnition of the term “work.” With respect to existing claims, the Portal-to-Portal Act provided that employers would not incur liability on account of their failure to pay minimum wages or overtime compen­ sation for any activity that was not compensable by either an express contract or an established custom or practice.2 2

Part II of the Portal-to-Portal Act, entitled “existing claims,” states in relevant part: “Sec. 2. Relief From Certain Existing Claims Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. . . — “(a) No employer shall be subject to any liability or punishment under the Fair Labor Standards Act. . . (in any action or proceeding commenced prior to or on or after the date of the enactment of this Act), on account of the failure of such employer to pay an employee minimum wages, or to pay an employee overtime compensation, for or on account of any activity of an employee engaged in prior to the date of the enactment of this Act, except an activity which was compensable by either—