Hourly Travel Compensation

JM in ATL · January 2006

According to the FLSA we need to compensate an employee who spends his time traveling "within normal business hours". I have an hourly employee who will be traveling for work on a Sunday. This is outside of his normal business hours.

Can anyone point to a specific document which states that we are required to pay him? I believe we are b/c he is traveling on his day off for business purposes, but I want to support this with documentation.

Thanks!

SMace · January 2006

I assume he is spending the night. Here is the explanation I get for this type of travel:
Travel Away from Home

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 employee is simply substituting travel for other duties.

This rule applies not only to hours worked on regular working days during normal working hours; it also applies 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 work time on Saturday and Sunday as well as on the other days. Regular meal period time is not counted.

So, you pay him for the time he travels during his regular work hours on Sunday. Now if he is a passenger in a train, plane, etc. I believe that changes things.

joycel · January 2006

I think the key here is "within normal business hours" -- that references 9-5, not Mon-Fri. I take it this person is non-exempt? If so, is he traveling within the normal work hours, even though it's on Sunday? If so, I'd say pay him. According to the 2006 American Payroll Association's Basic Guide to Payroll, Section 9-6 "Under the law, a workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours, (i.e., seven consecutive 24-hour periods)." So while he doesn't normally work on a Sunday it is within the workweek. Now if he's flying somewhere overnight then, as our lawyer so aptly put it, you're not going to pay him to sleep on a plane (you don't pay him to sleep at home). We handle that by paying for travel time as long as it is not in excess of 8 hours worked (normal work day), and is reasonable for the distance being covered.

ray a · January 2006

Check out this site:

[url]http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs22.htm[/url]

Scroll down to travel outside the community. It clearly says travel time that occurs even on non-work days but during normal working hours is compensable.

JM in ATL · January 2006

PERFECT! Much appreciated!

HRCalico · January 2006

We don't have many situations where non-exempt personnel travel, but I try to keep a balance between what the law says (only across normal hours) and what is fair to a reasonable person. For example, we sent several non-exempt people to visit a plant in Tulsa - chartered a plane and the whole deal. One employee normally worked on our swing shift. Not one single hour of the travel time crossed over our swing shift's normal schedule. We probably could have gotten away with paying her only for the hours worked and not the flight time, but I felt it would be pretty unfair to pay the first shift employees for their travel time and not the one second shift EE, and also, what does that do for morale?

This is one situation where I believe the law sets the minimum, and it is good business practice to go beyond that.

Hourly Travel Compensation

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