Non-Exempt overtime for travel

funkysan

We want to send a non-exempt employee on a business trip for three days. How is his time calculated for purposes of compensation and/or overtime. Is all his travel time treated as hours worked? Also if we send a non-exempt over seas for a business trip is the rules the same?

Frenchie

Wage and hour law treats travel time away from home as time worked if it cuts across the employee's work day hours, even if travel occurs on non-work days. The way we handle it here is we pay them from the time they leave home until they arrive at their destination, all time spent conducting business, and the travel time to return home.

Ex. Employee leaves at 1:00 p.m. and arrives at 5:00 p.m. He checks in to a hotel and has the evening free. The business meeting begins at 8:00 a.m. the next morning and lasts until 4:00 p.m. He has a one hour non-working lunch. The next day the schedule is the same. On the third day his business meeting ends a 4:00 p.m. and he arrives home at 8:00 p.m. He would be paid as follows-

8 hours of travel time
21 hours spent conducting business

This would be in addition to any regular work hours the employee had that week, and overtime would apply for any hours over forty in the workweek. We chose to pay our employees for travel time even if it doesn't cut across their normal work hours, however that is not required by law. Hope this helps.