Question: A nonexempt employee works from his/her home and travels to numerous sites that cover a large geographical area each day. Does their paid time begin when they leave their house on their way to their first job site or does it start when they reach their first job site? Also, does their paid time end when they finish their last job or when they arrive at their home?
Answer from the experts at HR.BLR.com:
The key to identifying whether travel time during the workday is compensable is determining whether the employees are engaged in travel as part of the employer’s principal activity or for the convenience of the employer. Whether time spent traveling is paid work time for nonexempt employees depends on the type of travel involved. Travel time that is work time is subject to both the minimum wage and overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The Portal-to-Portal Act provides that traveling to and from where work is performed at the beginning and end of the workday is not work time (29 USC 251 to 262). As a result, the employer does not need to pay the employee for traveling to and from work in this case, even with the long distance, because the travel falls under the portal-to-portal rule.
According to Title 29, Part 785 of the Code of Federal Regulations:
“An employee who travels from home before his regular workday and returns to his home at the end of the workday is engaged in ordinary home to work travel which is a normal incident of employment. This is true whether he works at a fixed location or at different job sites. Normal travel from home to work is not worktime.”
This time would only be compensable if it was a special one-day situation. 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.
Time that an employee spends traveling as part of his or her principal activity, such as travel from jobsite to jobsite during the workday, must be counted as hours worked. Where an employee is required to report at a meeting place to receive instructions, pick up tools, or to perform other work there, the travel from the designated place to the workplace is part of the day’s work and must be counted as hours worked regardless of contract or custom (29 CFR 785.38). As a result, the travel between work sites during the day would be compensable as work time.