This case raises an issue of coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended by the Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 201 et seq., 251 et seq., with respect to work performed before or after the direct or productive labor for which the worker is primarily paid.
The precise question is whether workers in a battery plant must be paid as a part of their 'principal' activities for the time incident to changing clothes at the beginning of the shift and showering at the end, where they must make extensive use of dangerously caustic and toxic materials, and are compelled by circumstances, including vital considerations of health had hygiene, to change clothes and to shower in facilities which state law requires their employer to provide, or whether these activities are 'preliminary' or 'postliminary' within the meaning of the Portal-to-Portal Act and, therefore, not to be included in measuring the work time for which compensation is required under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The Secretary of Labor, contending that these activities are so covered, brought this action in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee to enjoin petitioners from violating the overtime and record-keeping requirements of Sections 7 and 11(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended, in the employment of production workers, and from violating Section 15(a)(1) of the Act by making interstate shipments of the goods produced by such workers.
The District Court gave judgment for the plaintiff, and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 215 F.2d 171, 172. Because of the importance of the interpretation of the portal-to-portal provisions in the administration of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and because of a conflict between the circuits on the subject, Mitchell v. King Packing Co., 9 Cir., 216 F.2d 618, we granted certiorari in Both cases, 349 U.S. 914, 75 S.Ct. 605, 99 L.Ed. 1248.
There is no question of back pay involved here because the Court limited its judgment to prospective relief. Nor is the question of changing clothes and showering under normal conditions involved because the Government concedes that these activities ordinarily constitute 'preliminary' or 'postliminary' activities excluded from compensable work time as contemplated in the Act. It contends, however, that such activities in the circumstances of this case are an integral and indispensable part of the production of batteries, the 'principal activity' in which these employees were engaged, and are, therefore, compensable under the relevant provisions of the Act.