Cite as: 517 U. S. 392 (1996)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
intended by Congress under both the FLSA and the NLRA is best determined by consulting the language of the statute at issue. Because the relevant portions of § 3(f) are perfectly plain and "directly [speak] to the precise question at issue," Chevron, supra, at 842, I would hold that the chicken catchers and forklift operators are agricultural laborers and that the Board's contrary conclusion does not deserve deference.
The Court's determination rests largely upon a misreading of the statute in two respects. First, the Court tethers the "or on a farm" clause of § 3(f) to the employment relationship (or lack thereof) between the chicken catchers and forklift operators and the independent farmer who is charged with raising the chickens. And second, the Court decides that the secondary farming activities performed by the chicken catchers and forklift operators must not only be "incident" to the independent farmer's primary farming activities, but must be "mainly" or "most tightly" tied thereto. Neither conclusion finds support in the language of § 3(f).
The Court's first error stems from its adoption of the Board's focus on the lack of a direct employment relationship between the live-haul workers and the independent growers. But the "or on a farm" clause nowhere mentions the nature of the employment relationship. Instead, it is plainly concerned only with the nature of the work performed by the worker. The Board's interpretation must be rejected, as it would read the "or on a farm" clause out of the statute entirely.
The Court relies on the legislative history underlying the "or on a farm" clause, which we described in Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb, 337 U. S. 755, 763 (1949). That history reveals that the clause was intended to include within the statutory definition work performed on a farm that was "necessary to" the farming operations but not performed by the farmer himself. Id., at 767. One example figures prominently in the legislative history: a wheat
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