The central issue in this case is whether walking and waiting time, incident to the donning and doffing of required clothes and equipment, are compensable where (according to findings in the district court) the time spent in donning and doffing is minimal but the combined walking and waiting time may be extensive. There may be no “right” answer short of the Supreme Court’s reading of its own precedents, but the problem can at least be understood if the history and underlying tensions are candidly arrayed.
The original Fair Labor Standards Act made compensable time spent in “work,” but it defined the concept only in the most general terms without providing the Secretary of Labor with power to make legislative-type rules defining what constituted “work.” This left many problems to be solved piecemeal by litigation. One had to do with traveling within the job site before the main activity commenced; another, with the donning of special gear. A classic example is the miner’s travel and descent from the mine portal to the working face.
Against the background of the New Deal (and the war), it was not hard for the Supreme Court to conclude that subterranean travel through dark and dangerous tunnels, undertaken for the mine owner’s benefit, was work.8 Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court extended the reasoning in the mine-worker cases to conclude *284that time spent by employees of a medium-sized pottery factory in walking from time clock to work bench, and in making preliminary preparations such as donning and doffing specialized clothing, was work just as much as the actual productive activity that followed. Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 691-93, 66 S.Ct. 1187, 90 L.Ed. 1515 (1946).
These holdings contradicted actual, pay practice within the industries and created large overhanging liabilities for employers. To the extent that workers received more than the minimum wage, the decisions also upset underlying bargains. A flood of lawsuits followed. Congress responded with the Portal-to-Portal Act to cut off these claims for the past and to provide in the future (with exceptions not here relevant) that compensation was not required for:
(1) walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities which such employee is employed to perform, and
(2) activities which are preliminary to or postliminary to said principal activity or activities,
which occur either prior to the time on any particular workday at which such employee commences, or subsequent to the time on any particular workday at which he ceases, such principal activity or activities....
29 U.S.C. § 254(a) (2000).
A decade later, this new legislative balance was reset (and perhaps upset) in a small way by a new Supreme Court decision. In Steiner v. Mitchell, 350 U.S. 247, 76 S.Ct. 330, 100 L.Ed. 267 (1956), the Justices held that the Portal-to-Portal Act did not cover the time spent donning and doffing of special clothing and time spent showering, in facilities required by state law, to protect workers dealing with dangerously caustic and toxic materials. And, since the Portal-to-Portal Act did not apply, the time was to be treated as compen-sable work under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Steiner was an understandable reaction — after all, the dangers were extreme and unique to the job- — and the decision effectively invoked a verbal formula culled from the legislative history of the Act, 350 U.S. at 256, 76 S.Ct. 330 (concluding that pre-shift and post-shift activities are com-pensable if they are an “integral and indispensable” part of the principal activity); but the tension with the Portal-to-Portal Act’s underlying policy has been less easy to escape as Steiner has been extended.
One such extension by the lower courts embraced protective clothing necessitated by less extreme health or safety concerns, although the precedents are not uniform.9 However, the more serious problem for employers arises in cases such as this one by attempts to extend Steiner further to walking and waiting incident to such donning and doffing. This course may greatly extend the amount of time in question and may seem especially incongruous where the amount of time spent in actually donning and doffing clothes and equipment is generally pretty minimal.
The Secretary defends such an extension by combining Steiner’s verbal formula — “integral and indispensable” — with another settled principle: that once the workday has begun with the first principal *285activity, anything else until the workday ends is compensable unless the employee is essentially on his own (e.g., lunch breaks). On this theory, a worker who picks up and puts on a required helmet at the plant entrance — an activity integral to a principal activity under Steiner (as extended by lower courts)' — then must be compensated for everything else that happens (e.g., walking and waiting to pick up more equipment, walking to the time clock at the production floor entrance, waiting to punch in).
Yet, thus extended, the tension with the Portal-to-Portal Act becomes acute: after all, why is this complex of donning, doffing, waiting and travel within the Barber plant very different from the preliminary activities which were involved in the Mt. Clemens case — one of the targets of the Portal-to-Portal Act. Further, the legislative history and the Secretary’s own regulations give examples of events excluded from compensable work — such as time spent waiting to punch in and time spent walking from plant gate to work bench— that appear at odds with her position in this case. See S.Rep. No. 80-48, at 47 (1947); 29 C.F.R. § 790.7.
The Secretary answers, in effect, that those examples assumed that no required helmet was donned at the entrance — but should this really convert everything after into compensable work when it would not otherwise be? In any event, the Secretary can cite a favorable result in the Ninth Circuit, see Alvarez, 339 F.3d at 906-07; but the Fifth and Tenth Circuits, addressing variants on this theme, have resisted the Secretary’s result, although not for the same reasons.10
One further basis for resisting the Secretary derives from yet another principle from the Supreme Court, namely, that under certain circumstances time spent on a de minimis activity that is not the main activity of the worker should be disregarded. See Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 692-93, 66 S.Ct. 1187. If the time spent donning and doffing is de minimis, can it also not be disregarded as starting the workday and allow courts to disregard the associated walking and waiting? Such a result is not on its face at odds with Steiner where the donning and doffing and showering were not claimed to be de minimis.
The Secretary replies that the de minim-is concept has nothing to do with when the workday begins or ends but the de minimis concept is much fuzzier than the Secretary lets on: in the Supreme Court case that spawned it, the Court stated broadly that “compensable working time is involved” only “when an employee is required to give up a substantial measure of his time and effort.” Mt. Clemens, 328 U.S. at 692, 66 S.Ct. 1187. So one could say that a de minimis activity which is non-compensable time under Mt. Clemens does not start of the workday, at least when preliminary to arrival “on the factory floor.”
Thus, two positions are juxtaposed. One is the Secretary’s mechanical combination of Steiner with a rigid “everything after is work” principle. The other is to treat required donning and doffing as com-pensable where more than de minimis but, where it is not, leaving both it and any associated walking and waiting time as non-compensable. Neither outcome is impossible analytically and neither is clearly dictated by Supreme Court precedent or underlying policy.
So where does the balance of advantage lie? Admittedly, the donning, doffing, *286waiting and walking involved are in the employer’s service: but that was equally true in the Mt. Clemens case and Congress made a policy decision against required compensation. And, while the Secretary’s interpretive view (although non-binding) is entitled to some deference, United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U.S. 218, 228, 121 S.Ct. 2164, 150 L.Ed.2d 292 (2001), it is recent and offered only in litigation: no explicit regulation mandates the Secretary’s outcome and the text of 29 C.F.R. § 790.7(g) n.49 points towards excluding the walking and waiting time.
On Barber’s side, as already noted, the history and language of the Portal-to-Portal Act tend to favor Barber, as do two of the three circuit decisions; the question is how far Steiner has qualified the statute. Perhaps it is enough for a lower court that the Secretary’s position is, in practical effect, a substantial step beyond Steiner. As Steiner itself tempers the Portal-to~ Portal Act’s main thrust, probably its extension should be left to the Supreme Court.
Finally, it appears that wages at the Barber plant were set against a background practice of treating as non-compen-sable the donning, doffing, walking and waiting involved in this case. Unless those wages are the federal minimum, a decision that now such time is compensable will likely be offset by wage adjustments in the future, leaving only a one-time windfall for employees. It is hard to begrudge this to workers doing difficult and disagreeable work, but the situation does bear an uncanny resemblance to that which prompted the Portal-to-Portal Act. It may be time for the Supreme Court to have another look at the problem.
. See Jewett Ridge Coal Corp. v. Local No. 6167, United Mine Workers, 325 U.S. 161, 163-66, 65 S.Ct. 1063, 89 L.Ed. 1534 (1945); Tennessee Coal, Iron. & R.R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590, 598-99, 64 S.Ct. 698, 88 L.Ed. 949 (1944).
. Compare, e.g., Alvarez v. IBP, Inc., 339 F.3d 894, 903 (9th Cir.2003) (extending Steiner to such items as sanitary aprons) with e.g., Reich v. IBP, Inc., 38 F.3d 1123, 1126 (10th Cir.1994) (holding that the donning and doffing of sanitary outergarments, although required, was not integral and indispensable); Anderson v. Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., 147 F.Supp.2d 556, 563 (E.D.Tex.2001)(same), aff’d, 44 Fed.Appx. 652 (5th Cir.2002).
. Anderson, 147 F.Supp.2d at 563 n. 12 (holding that “walk time” to employee's work station was not compensable), aff'd, 2002 WL 1396949 (5th Cir.); Reich, 38 F.3d at 1127 (upholding the denial of “walk and wait” time related to donning and doffing).