Please contact Doug Taylor at (703) 525-4000 or rdougtaylor@beankinney.com. The DOL makes clear that, for some nonexempt employees, whether travel away from home is compensable depends on when and how the employee travels. If accrued compensatory time off is not used by an FLSA-nonexempt employee within 26 pay periods or if the FLSA-nonexempt employee transfers to another agency or separates from Federal service before the expiration of the 26 pay period time limit, the employee must be paid for the earned compensatory time off at the overtime rate in effect when earned. chapter 81. For enforcement purposes, WHD has defined normal commuting distance as within a one-hour drive of the employees home. I have made hundreds of FLSA presentations over the years. These decisions should not be used as the basis for other FLSA claims because these decisions do not provide enough information for direct application in other FLSA claims. arrived (and begins working) at her office at 9:30 a.m. performed no work either during the commute or after she arrived home. Exempt and non-exempt status differentiation has long helped keep labor standards fair and workplace needs easier to pinpoint and execute. Each decision relates to a specific position and may not provide an appropriate basis for extrapolation to other positions. The FLSA claim decisions posted on these pages do not substitute for application of our FLSA regulations and are not "case law." You or your duly appointed representative may request to withdraw your claim at any time before we issue a decision. Under the Portal-to-Portal Act, which is an amendment to the FLSA, a non-exempt employees time spent traveling to and from their workplace whether a fixed location or different job sites is not compensable if it occurs before the employee starts or after the employee stops his principal activity or activities. However, travel from [a] designated place to the work place is part of the days work, and must be counted as hours worked when an employee is required to report at a meeting place to receive instructions or to perform other work there, or to pick up and to carry tools[. The FLSA provides for two categories of exemptions: (1) those that exempt employees from both minimum wage and overtime and (2) those that exempt them from only overtime. Optimize operations, connect with external partners, create reports and keep inventory accurate. Get more accurate and efficient results with the power of AI, cognitive computing, and machine learning. We may cancel your claim if you or your designated representative fail to provide requested information. Of course there is always an exception to the rules. Wage & Hour Watch, Mike Staebell, Employment & Labor Law, Tagged As: Compensatory time off can also be approved for a "prevailing rate employee," as defined at 5 U.S.C. An FLSA-exempt employee must use accrued compensatory time off by the end of the 26th pay period after the pay period during which it was earned. Exemption Status Changes Employees may change exemption status for various reasons. Claimant made whole by agency; willful violation did not occur; no additional overtime pay is due, Claimant was under a compressed work schedule; no overtime pay due; willful violation did not occur, Time in on-call status is not hours of work under FLSA, Changed from exempt to nonexempt Overtime pay is due, Claimant not on valid maxiflex schedule; additional pay is due, Claimant due overtime pay for certain hours of travel, Liquidated and punitive damages not available to administrative claims subject to the Back Pay Act, Exemption status not at issue; claim should have been filed under the provisions of Part 178 of 5 CFR; claim denied since the record does not show overtime work was ordered and approved by an authorized official, Claimants may file a claim either with the employing agency or OPM; FLSA overtime is not capped; FLSA claims procedures do not cover payroll processing disputes, On-call status is not hours of work under FLSA, Changed: Was exempt, now nonexempt Overtime pay is due, Changed: Was exempt, now nonexempt; willful violation did not occur; overtime pay is due, Agency changed status from exempt to nonexempt; failure to designate representative in writing; failure to file a claim in writing, willful violation did not occur; additional overtime pay is due, Work performed controls exemption status; Federal employees are appointed to their positions and are not under employment contracts; temporary duties were nonexempt Additional overtime pay is due, Changed: Was exempt, now nonexempt; additional overtime pay is due, Changed: Was exempt, now nonexempt; additional overtime pay is due; willful violation did not occur, Changed: Was exempt, now nonexempt; additional overtime pay is due ; willful violation did not occur, Travel time within duty station without performing substantial work is not compensable as hours of work; willful violation did not occur, No change: Work performed covered by administrative exemption, Changed: Became nonexempt during emergency work, Changed from exempt to nonexempt for a period of performing temporary work during an emergency, Agency erred in applying 5 CFR 550.113(b) to nonexempt employee; nonexempt employee compensatory time must be computed in conformance with 5 CFR 551.512 and liquidated in conformance with 5 CFR 551.531(f) and (g), Exempt under the professional exemption; claim should be filed under the provisions of Part 178 of 5 CFR; request for reversal of termination and reinstatement not covered by the FLSA claims process, Bargaining unit position, OPM lacks claims jurisdiction; lack of standing to represent other employees; lack of subject-matter jurisdiction over Whistleblower complaints; discipline of employees vested in employing agency management, Exempt employee; claim barred by res judicata, Claimant failed to preserve claim timely, claim time barred; not part to and, thus, not covered by settlement agreement, Changed: Was exempt, now nonexempt; claimant is not covered by a court decision on a case to which he was not a party; willful violation did not occur; liquidated damages is not applicable to administrative claim decisions issued pursuant to subpart G of part 551 of 5 CFR. The amount of PTO hours earned are equivalent to the number of hours worked Standby duty pay under 5 U.S.C. Special one-day travel to another city is compensable worktime, although the employer may deduct the normal commuting time. The employer posed two related questions to the DOL: The Supreme Court explained many years ago that work time under the FLSA occurs when an employees activities are controlled or required primarily for the benefit of the employer. Official websites use .gov Example of Travel during the Work Day: A non-exempt employee works on the Belknap Campus as well as on the ShelbyHurst Campus; the employee frequently travels between the locations, sometimes multiple times a day. For FLSA-exempt employees, the crediting of travel time as hours of work is governed under title 5 rules-in particular, 5 U.S.C. Some information, such as the claimant's name and organizational information that might identify the claimant, in these FLSA claim decisions has been withheld under exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act (section 552(b)(6) of title 5, United States Code). Des Moines, secure websites. Our blog topics focus on those changes and what you need to know about them, ranging from severance agreements and the FLSA to social media in the workplace and recent court decisions. One South Street, Suite 1800, Baltimore, Maryland 21202. The FLSA generally requires covered employers to compensate employees at one and one-half times the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a single work week or in excess of a FLSA-defined work period. In a prior post, I discussed the five white-collar exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Acts (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS organization in the United States. Save time with tax planning, preparation, and compliance. In the case of the U.S., under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) this includes executive, administrative, professional, computer, and outside sales employees. Relevant News General News New Salary & Benefits Survey Launching in 2023 Analyze data to detect, prevent, and mitigate fraud. Search volumes of data with intuitive navigation and simple filtering parameters. 5542(a)(2), for employees with rates of basic pay greater than the basic pay for GS-10, step 1, the overtime hourly rate is the greater of-. Lock FLSA-nonexempt employees earn compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay under section 7 of the FLSA (29 U.S.C. Of course, there are also office workers who are non-exempt, but there are few, if any, labor-intensive positions that carry exempt status. Opinion letters respond to a wage-hour inquiry to the DOL from an employer or other entity, and represent the DOLs official position on that particular issue. Mike Staebell. To that end, we adopted a series of administrative and technical procedures in order to strengthen the protection of your right to personal data protection. An official website of the United States government. Email: shawe@shawe.com 5541(2), who work full-time, part-time, or intermittent tours of duty are eligible for title 5 overtime pay. Check out our contact page for the address for Federal employee FLSA claims filed with OPM. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to ** Visiting the Federal Relay Service website will provide access to additional Toll-Free and Toll Access Numbers. A .gov website belongs to an official government Talk with your supervisor. 5547 is also a ceiling on compensatory time off. Overnight travel is considered travel away from home, and is compensable when the travel time occurs during the employees normal working hours, even on non-work days but not travel time that occurs outside the employees normal working hours. Of those, there were only a handful where the issue of travel time compensation for employees was not raised, even when the topic wasnt on the agenda. 5376 are not excluded from the definition of "employee" in 5 U.S.C. travel time, travel compensation, Iowa Wage & Hour Watch, FLSA, Iowa Employer Law Blog. . or any of its attorneys. A .gov website belongs to an official government Such travel time is also working hours during the corresponding hours on nonworking days. page or go to the Wage and Hour Division of the Employment Standards Administration in the United States Department of Labor. Pella, The decisions in the FLSA Decisions Table are listed in order by occupational series and within series by grade. Professional Time Off (PTO) are hours earned for time worked outside of the normal business hours. Employees in positions classified as nonexempt (or those that are salaried but comp time eligible) under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) may be eligible for compensation for the time they spend traveling. If you would like to stay up to date regarding changes to the FLSA and other related employment law and regulations, you shouldtry Practical Law for free today. For example, when an employee regularly works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, any work travel time during these hours is compensable on Saturday and Sunday as well as on the weekdays. When permitted under agency flexible work schedule programs, time off with pay in lieu of overtime pay for regularly scheduled or irregular or occasional overtime work. If an employee is offered public transportation but requests to drive his or her car instead, the employer may count as hours worked either the time spent driving the car or the time he would have had to count as hours worked during working hours if the employee had used the public transportation. (An FLSA-exempt employee whose earned compensatory time off would otherwise be forfeited due to an exigency of service beyond the employee's control must receive payment for the unused compensatory time off at the overtime rate in effect when earned. A. Interestingly and confusingly, the regulations state that WHD takes no position on whether home-to-work travel time is compensable for an employee who receives an emergency call outside of his or her regular hours to report for work at his or her regular place of business. 5542(a)(2). Provides a full line of federal, state, and local programs. Because of the detailed information required and the fact finding and analysis work we must do in an FLSA claim case, we cannot respond to specific questions about your individual situation. while completing personal tasks in between. Her travel time home at the end of the workday was ordinary commuting time and not compensable. In this post I will attempt to make sense of these regulations that cause heartburn for so many employers. Automate workpaper preparation and eliminate data entry. Time spent in home-to-work travel by an employee in an employer-provided vehicle, or in activities performed by an employee that are incidental to the use of the vehicle for commuting, generally is not "hours worked" and, therefore, does not have to be paid. You should be aware that there might be a delay between official publication of materials and their change or appearance on these pages. III. A copy, On April 20, 2023, Lindsey White moderated a panel for American Bar Association Section of Labor & Employment Law National Symposium on Technology in Labor and Employment Law on the, Lindsey White was quoted in a April 7, 2023 article by Allen Smith for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM.org), When Fitness-for-Duty Examinations Are Allowed. (Subscription may be required. In contrast, however, travel that is a part of an employees principal activity, e.g., travel between different worksites between the start and the end of the workday, is considered part of the employees workday and must be paid. As provided by 5 CFR 551.531(d), the employee must be paid for the 16 hours of unused compensatory time off at the overtime rate in effect when earned. Travel time pay rates differ between countries and within the different states in the U.S. The FLSA defines "employ" as including "to suffer or permit to work," 29 U.S.C. Identify patterns of potentially fraudulent behavior with actionable analytics and protect resources and program integrity. Their annual salary is often a negotiable figure that is agreed upon before the job is accepted and doesn't fluctuate even if the employee works fewer than 40 hours in a week. 5541(2). When travel time of non-exempt employees constitutes hours worked under the FLSA is a confusing issue. Agencies must provide payment for, or require forfeiture of, compensatory time off under the conditions set forth in 5 CFR 550.114(d)-(f) and 5 CFR 551.531(d)-(f), as applicable. Access a comprehensive collection of employment-related legal resources, including how-to guides and checklists created by our expert attorney-editors, Payroll, compensation, pension & benefits, Fraud prevention, detection & investigations, Document retrieval & due diligence services, Do not sell or share my personal information and limit the use of my sensitive personal information, Professional workers (that is, learned/knowledge-based positions). Around the globe, with unmatched speed and scale, Reuters Connect gives you the power to serve your audiences in a whole new way. For example, it is common in the construction industry for employees to report to a designated meeting place such as a shop or office to receive instructions, pick up tools or materials, or to perform other work there prior to traveling to the first jobsite of the workday.
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