Travel by non-exempts outside the normal area brings two different sets of rules into play. (As we mentioned yesterday, exempt employees are expected to work as and when the job requires.)
Special Assignment in a Different Location
When an employee who regularly works at a fixed location in one city is given a special one-day assignment in another city, much of the time spent traveling is work time and must be compensated.
For example, an employee who works in Washington, D.C., with regular work hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., is given a special assignment in New York City, with instruction to leave Washington at 7 a.m. She arrives in New York at noon, ready for work. The special assignment is completed at 3 p.m., and the employee arrives back in Washington at 8 p.m. Such travel is not regarded as ordinary home-to-work travel and must be compensated. It was performed for the employer’s benefit and at its special request to meet the needs of a particular and unusual assignment. Therefore, it would qualify as an integral part of the principal activity that the employee was hired to perform.
All the time involved, however, need not be counted. Except for the special assignment, the employee would have had to report to her regular worksite. The travel time between her home and the railroad station need not be compensated. Also, the usual mealtime need not be paid.
Overnight Travel
Travel that keeps an employee away from home overnight is designated as “travel away from home” by the Wage and Hour Division regulations. Travel away from home is paid work time only when it cuts across the employee’s normal workday. This is because the employee is deemed to be simply substituting travel for other duties.
(Again, as mentioned in yesterday’s Advisor, be aware that state laws may differ significantly from federal law in the area of travel pay.)
The time is not only hours worked on regular workdays during normal work hours, but also during the corresponding hours on nonwork days. The Wage and Hour Division, however, does not consider time spent traveling away from home outside of regular working hours as a passenger on a plane, train, boat, or bus as paid work time.
For example, if an employee who normally works 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday is a passenger on a plane departing for San Francisco at 9 a.m. on a Saturday, his time spent traveling is work time because it cuts across his normal working hours. It does not matter that Saturday is not a normal workday. However, if the plane departed at 6 p.m. instead, his travel time would not be counted as paid work time because he would be traveling outside of normal working hours.
However, regular meal period time is not counted as work time.
Wage/Hour hassles never end. Fortunately, there’s a well-timed solution—BLR’s new February 7 webinar. Practical, field-tested approaches for managing non-exempt travel pay, on-call time, training time, and more. Get info here.
When Private Automobiles Are Used
If an employee is offered public transportation but requests permission to drive his or her car instead, the employer may count as hours worked either the time spent driving the car or the time it would have had to count as hours worked if the employee had used the public transportation. For example, if an employee chooses to drive her car to Philadelphia, a six-hour trip, instead of taking the train, which takes just four hours, the employer may treat as work time either four hours or six hours.
If an employee is required to drive his or her car, the employer must count all time spent en route as hours worked regardless of whether or not the hours were normal working hours.
As a best practice, employees who are expected to use their personal vehicles for company business should be required to show proof of insurance coverage and to keep accurate and detailed records (time, date, duration, purpose).
Non-exempt travel time—The federal rules are wacky and some state rules really muddy the water beyond that. Fortunately there’s a timely February 7 BLR webinar: Travel Pay: How to Comply with the Arcane Federal and State Requirements.
Experts say travel pay disputes—from business trips and mandatory off-site training to commuting time, waiting time, and on-call time—are fueling a surge in wage and hour lawsuits. Why?
- Many employers haven’t updated their workplace policies in recent years to keep up with changing federal and state guidelines.
- In this tough economy, more employees are eager to claim extra travel pay and recover their out-of-pocket work expenses.
- Travel pay disagreements are wage and hour issues—making them a highly attractive target for plaintiff’s attorneys looking for big-bucks damages!
Eliminate travel pay hassles for good—with practical, field-tested techniques. Attend BLR’s February 7 Travel Pay webinar.Click here to find out more.
Making matters worse, the rules governing travel pay vary wildly, based on whether workers are commuting or traveling on assignment, whether they’re driving their own cars or company vehicles, and whether they’re exempt or non-exempt. Even for experienced supervisors and HR managers, the guidelines can be very confusing.
Join us on February 7 to learn the basic dos and don’ts of travel pay during this practical 90-minute webinar.
You’ll learn:
- What types of waiting time and on-call time will be compensable for employees including checking email or smartphones outside work hours
- How to handle the most common issues with overnight travel, such as the different wage/hour rules for work performed by exempt and non-exempt employees on these trips
- Whether you must always pay workers for their time spent at training programs, seminars, and conferences
- The special factors that could change your travel pay obligations, such as employees driving their own vehicles or responding to work-related emergencies
- The standards you must apply when gauging whether commuting time or travel during regular work hours (e.g., visiting customers) qualifies as paid work time
- How federal employment laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Portal-to-Portal Act) affect your existing travel pay policies
- Best practices for drafting effective travel pay policies (with sample policies included in your handout that you can adapt right away)
Travel Pay—The Webinar
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (PST)
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (MST)
12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (CST)
1:30 to 3:00 p.m. (EST)
Join us on Tuesday, February 7—you’ll get the in-depth Travel Pay webinarAND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR webinars:
- One fee trains all the staff you can fit around a conference phone
- You can get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow each segment of the presentation
- Your satisfaction is assured or you get a full refund
What if you can’t attend on that date? Pre-order the conference CD. For more information on the conference and the experts presenting it, to register, or to pre-order the CD, click here. We’ll be happy to make the arrangements.