Wage Theft – Employers May Have to Pay Travel and Commuting Time

The U.S. Department of Labor has published guidelines regarding a worker’s eligibility for pay while traveling or commuting.

Depending on the facts of each case, an employer may be responsible for paying an employee’s travel time. If that puts the worker over 40 hours in a 7-day period, there may also be a duty to pay overtime.

The principles which apply in determining whether you should be paid during travel or commuting depends upon the kind of travel involved.

Home to Work Travel (Commuting)

An employee who travels from home before the regular workday and returns to his/her home at the end of the workday is engaged in ordinary home to work travel, which is not considered work time. There is no requirement to pay workers for normal commuting.

There is an exception if the worker is required to do substantial work before leaving the home.

Checking a voice mail probably isn’t enough but if your employer requires you to do substantial work at home such as scheduling appointments, logging onto your computer or printing documents, there may be enough to trigger a requirement for pay.

If the court finds that your work day started at home, then the subsequent drive to work could also be eligible for pay status.

Home to Work on a Special One Day Assignment in Another City

Today many workers are sent to a different work site or another city for a meeting. These rules are intended to cover an employee who regularly works at a fixed location in one city but then is given a special one-day assignment in another city and returns home the same day.

The time spent in traveling to and returning from the other city is work time, except that the employer may deduct/not count that time the employee would normally spend commuting to the regular work site.

Travel That is All in a Day’s Work

Time spent by an employee in travel as part of their principal activity, such as travel from job site to job site during the workday, is work time and must be counted as hours worked.

Travel Away from Home Community

Travel that keeps an employee away from home overnight is travel away from home. Travel away from home is clearly work time when it cuts across the employee’s workday.

The time is not only hours worked on regular working days during normal working hours but also during corresponding hours on nonworking days.

As an enforcement policy the Division will not consider as work time that time spent in travel away from home outside of regular working hours as a passenger on an airplane, train, boat, bus, or automobile.

Most workers are entitled to be paid for all hours worked and to be paid overtime at the rate of time and one-half for hours in excess of 40 hours during a 7-day period. Even salaried workers may be eligible for overtime.

Simply because your boss says you are exempt from overtime doesn’t make it legal.

Join a Free Wage & Hour Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you were forced to work off the clock or without overtime pay within the past 3 years, you have rights – and you don’t have to take on the company alone.

Time traveling away from home or for working at home every day can quickly add up. It is not uncommon for workers to find they are owed hundreds of hours of pay and often at premium rates.

If you are forced to file a wage and hour class action, you could receive double damages.

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