Non-exempt Time for Travel

Paula_AZ

I have a non-exempt employee who will be visiting our corporate office in another state for a couple days. Is any part of the travel time (travel to the airport, flight time, travel to the hotel, etc.) considered worked time?

Hatchetman

Yes, under FLSA travel that cuts across the hours of the employee's work day would be ocmpnesable in this case. This includes if the employee travels during those same hours on a regular day off.

Take a look at 29CFR785.39:

Travel that keeps an employee away from home overnight is travel away from home. Travel away from home is clearly worktime when it cuts across the employee's workday. The employee is simply substituting travel for other duties. The time is not only hours worked on regular working days during normal working hours but also during the corresponding hours on nonworking days. Thus, if an employee regularly works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday the travel time during these hours is worktime on Saturday and Sunday as well as on the other days. Regular meal period time is not counted. As an enforcement policy the Divisions will not consider as worktime that time spent in travel away from home outside of regular working hours as a passenger on an airplane, train, boat, bus, or automobile.

Paula_AZ

Thank you. I did read that section of the FLSA. What I didn't make sense of is what if the employee is traveling to the other state after her regular workday is over on Tuesday and traveling back home after her regular workday is over on Friday. Is that time considered worked time, even though her regular workday is over?

Hatchetman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-10-04 AT 04:27PM (CST)[/font][br][br]Well, under FLSA regulation and US DOL Opinion, travel outside of the regular work hours of the employee would not be considered work since the travel is not substituting for the duties that would be performed during that time.

Of course, your state wage and hour law may take a different position (as it does here in California).

If the employee travels to another state to visit family rather than return the next day to work, that to me compensable if it occurs during the regular hours of work schedule, even on a day off. The reg doens't appear to speak to the specific issue though but since the employee went there for company business and has to return somewhere, then it seems to me the travel to the designated place of return if it occurs during the work hours schedule meets the criteria set in the partiuclar regulation (but the amount of time should not exceed the time it would have taken to fly back to the home community -- sound familiar?). But you should probably need to check with legal counsel. The travel the next day from the designated palce of retun back to the home community during the regular work hours schedule would not be work time it seems to me.

But from what you describe since the emplyee is traveling outside fo the regular schedule hours then under the FLSA provision that would not be compensable as work time in any case (except where state wage and hour law would hold differently).

Just my opinion.