Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers are required to pay all non-exempt employees, usually hourly employees, for all hours worked. One question that frequently came up after the FLSA became law was regarding travel time pay for hourly employees and “does drive time count as hours worked?” In the Portal-to-Portal Act, an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Congress attempted to clarify the treatment of travel time for purposes of wage payment and overtime requirements. Although some questions about travel time and travel pay still remain, many have been answered.
Table Of ContentsThe FLSA and the Portal-to-Portal Act makes clear that employers do not need to pay employees for travel from home to work before the start of the workday or travel from work to home after the workday is over. See 29 CFR § 785.35, US DOL Travel Time Fact Sheet One exception to this general rule is when an employee’s workday has ended and they are called back to work. If the employee has to travel an unusually long distance to get to a worksite after normal work hours, that travel time may be counted as hours worked. The example given by the US Department of Labor (DOL) is that of an employee who is gone home from work and is then called to respond to an emergency a significant distance from home. The employer would be required to pay the employee for the time spent traveling to the location of the emergency. 29 CFR § 785.36
The Portal-to-Portal Act requires an employer to include time spent traveling from one workplace to another during the same workday as hours worked. As the Fair Labor Standards Act travel time laws explain, this would not include travel time from home to work before the start of a workday or from work to home after a workday ends. However, it would include time spent traveling from a central meeting place to a final work location. 29 CFR § 785.38 For example, if a general contractor requires its trades people and laborers to meet at its offices before traveling to a construction site, the general contractor would be required to include the time spent traveling between the offices and the construction site in the hours worked by each employee. Likewise, it would consider any time spent by any trades person or laborer traveling between two or more construction sites during the same workday as hours worked. The general contractor would not, however, be required to include as hours worked time spent by the employee traveling from home to the offices before traveling to the construction site or traveling home from the offices after the workday is over. It would also not be required to include time spent traveling home from a construction site after a workday is over if the employee is not required to return to the offices.
An employer must pay an employee for time spent traveling to and from another city in the same day. If the employee does not first report to his usual workplace, the employer may be able to deduct the time the employee usually takes to get to and from work from the time spent traveling to the other city. 29 CFR § 785.37
When employees are required to travel away from their homes and that travel spans more than one workday, an employer must include in hours worked the time actually spent traveling, e.g., in a car or on airplane or train, only if it occurs during the employee’s normal work hours. For example, if an employee normally works from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., an employer is only required to include time spent traveling during that time period as hours worked. Time spent traveling before 8:00 a.m. and after 5:00 p.m. would not need to be included – with one caveat, if the employee actually performs work while traveling, the employer must include the time spent working as hours worked. 29 CFR § 785.39 Also, employers must count as hours worked time spent by employees traveling on non-workdays if the travel takes place during the employees’ normal work hours. To clarify, if an employee normally works Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and the employee is traveling on Saturday, the employer would be required to count as hours worked the time spent traveling by the employee between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on that Saturday. If the employee’s travel spans that entire normal workday time period, the employer would be required to include all that time, minus time usually given for lunch or breaks, as hours worked. 29 CFR § 785.39. As noted above, if the employee actually performs work on a non-workday while he or she is traveling, the employer would need to count that time as hours worked regardless of what time the work is performed.
Many states have the same travel time overtime rules regarding as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as enforced by the US Department of Labor (DOL). However, they are other that have established more restrictive travel time overtime laws. Below are links to individual states and their waiting time rules:
* States may have their own minimum wage and overtime laws, including their own standards for when an employee must be paid for waiting time. Employers are required to apply the federal or state minimum and overtime law that provides employees the greatest benefits. For more information on state minimum wage and overtime laws, visit our pages on minimum wage and overtime.