Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/248

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Unit: $$U5

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

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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