By Geoffrey D. Rieder
Are employees who commute from home to a remote worksite entitled to minimum wage for time spent traveling to and from the worksite? The New Mexico Court of Appeals recently addressed this question.
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J.W. Drilling is an oil field drilling contractor based in Artesia. It conducts business in the Permian Basin and pays most of its workers an hourly wage as nonexempt employees. Some of the workers sued the company in an Eddy County district court, claiming they were owed wages, including overtime, for the time spent traveling between home and remote worksites.
The employees claimed that J.W. Drilling’s “method of operation made travel a part of their . . . duties and a term of their employment relationship.” They complained the employer “only paid employees from the time they arrived at work until they departed, despite the fact that due to travel time to the remote location, the employees ‘worked’ more than 40 hours a week.”