Many employers get sued for failing to properly administer compensable time — including the requirement that generally, employers must pay employees for time spent in training programs, meetings or similar activities. So to avoid costly litigation or enforcement challenges, an employer needs to understand — and correctly apply —the Fair Labor Standards Act’s basic criteria for compensable time. Following are some important points to consider.
The Law
Under the FLSA, meetings, trainings and other similar activities must be considered compensable time unless the following four criteria are met:
- attendance is voluntary;
- attendance occurs outside regular working hours;
- the meeting or training is not directly related to the employee’s job; and
- the employee does not do any “productive” work while at the meeting or training.
Cautionary Tale
Incorrectly navigating this compensable time question can land an employer in court. Recently, a federal judge ruled that the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico will have to go to court to sort out whether time spent by 120 current and former security officers in five-minute briefings before the start of their shifts is compensable under the FLSA (Brubach v. Albuquerque (D.N.M., No. 10-CV-1113)).
According to court documents, a Standard Operating Procedure applied to security personnel stated that “officers should arrive for duty five minutes prior to their assigned shift to be briefed by officers going off duty.” A factual dispute between the city and the security officers who sued exists over whether the officers were required to comply with the SOP. Allegations also were made in the lawsuit that meal breaks were not properly administered, and therefore additional back pay was due for that time.
Because of still-unresolved factual issues, the court denied summary judgment requests, clearing the way for the case to go to trial for a resolution.
Employer Takeaway
Employers need to be vigilant about how and when they decide to hold meetings and trainings. The bottom line is they must pay employees for time they are required to spend in meetings and trainings, except for a few limited exceptions. Time spent figuring out these issues up-front could save time —and money — down the road.
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