In a new decision, the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that unless a union contract
specifically states otherwise, union employees are covered by state law
provisions granting employees pay for employer-mandated travel time from a
designated meeting place to a jobsite. We’ll explain.
Employees Required to
Use Employer
Transportation to
Jobsite
Kiewit Pacific
Corporation employed union workers to install duct and fiber optic lines on two
projects. Kiewit prohibited its employees from reporting directly to their
daily jobsites. Instead, the employees had to meet at a designated location at
the start of each day where Kiewit’s managers gave instructions for the day’s tasks.
Then, employees traveled in company vans or trucks to their jobsites. At the
end of the workday, employees reboarded these vehicles to return to the original
meeting sites.
Employees Seek Pay for
Travel Time
Eventually, a group of
employees sued on behalf of about 270 current and former installers, charging
that Kiewit violated
wage and hour law by not compensating employees for the time spent traveling to
and from the designated meeting spots to their jobsites and back again. The
combined meeting and travel time added 2 to 21/2 hours of work to each employee’s day. And, because the employees
already worked more than 8 hours every day and more than 40 hours every week,
the meeting and travel hours constituted overtime. As a result, the lawsuit
alleged, Kiewit owed about $16 million in back overtime wages.
The HR Management & Compliance Report: How To Comply with California Wage & Hour Law, explains everything you need to know to stay in compliance with the state’s complex and ever-changing rules, laws, and regulations in this area. Coverage on bonuses, meal and rest breaks, overtime, alternative workweeks, final paychecks, and more.
Labor Law or Wage and
Hour?
Kiewit tried to get the
California wage and hour claims dismissed, arguing that the case really
involved questions of federal labor law—namely, that the employees were covered
by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), some of which addressed travel time
pay, so determining whether the employees were owed backpay required interpreting
the CBA provisions.
CONTENTS
State Wage Protections
Apply to Union Workers
But the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals refused to dismiss the suit.1 The court explained that an employee’s right to
be compensated for time spent in compulsory round-trip travel is granted under
right is independent of any provisions that might be contained in a CBA.
Specifically, the wage order covering the employees here contains a “reporting
time pay” requirement, specifying that “all employer-mandated travel that
occurs after the first location where the employee’s presence is required by the
employer shall be compensated at the employee’s regular rate of pay” or
at overtime premium rates if applicable.
This wage order further
permits unionized employees and employers to opt out of this reporting time pay
requirement, but only if the waiver is contained in the CBA. In other words,
the state law right remains with the employee unless it is expressly given
away. Said the court: “A unionized employee cannot be deprived of the full
protections afforded by state law simply by virtue of the fact that her union
has entered into a CBA.”
In this case, however,
the CBAs contained no such waiver of the employees’ state law right to
compensation for their travel time from the designated meeting spot to the
jobsite. Thus, the employees’ claim for overtime compensation based on such
travel time simply involved an alleged breach of state law, and federal labor
laws weren’t implicated.
Impact of Decision
As this case
underscores, simply because a union contract addresses a certain wage and hour
matter doesn’t automatically mean the employer is off the hook for complying
with contrary Labor Code or wage order requirements. Some wage order provisions
specifically exempt employees covered by collective bargaining agreements, and
sometimes only if the exemption/waiver is spelled out in the CBA—but others do
not.
This case is also a reminder
that if it is mandatory for an employee to use employer-provided transportation
to the jobsite, you must pay the employee for the actual travel time plus any
time spent waiting for the transportation to arrive after the designated time employees
are required to be at the designated assembly spot.
You can link to this
case online at www.ca9.uscourts.gov/.
_
1 Burnside v. Kiewit
Pacific Corp., U.S.C.A. 9th Cir. No. 04-57134, 2007