Suppose your boss instructs you to go on a business trip, or asks you to visit several of your company's locations around town. How much of the time you spend traveling should you be paid for?
The answer to that question can be complicated. Whether you are entitled to pay for travel time depends on when you're traveling, where you're going, and why you're going there.
The question of whether travel time is paid is only relevant to some employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is the federal statute that deals with issues like minimum wage and overtime pay (29 U.S.C. §203). It also establishes standards for when employers must pay employees for travel time. The FLSA classifies certain types of employees as “exempt,” meaning that those employees are not entitled to overtime pay and certain other benefits. While this might sound harsh, one of the biggest groups of employees considered exempt are those who work in a “bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity.” This describes employees in management and other higher-level positions within a company.
Exempt employees generally receive salaries. Nonexempt employees, on the other hand, are usually paid by the hour. When asking whether an employee is entitled to pay for travel time, we typically mean nonexempt, hourly employees.
The Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 limits employers’ obligations under the FLSA to pay employees for time spent “walking, riding, or traveling to and from” home and work (29 USC §251 and following). Thus, employees are not entitled to pay for their daily commute, even if that commute takes hours. The Department of Labor (DOL) calls this “ordinary home to work travel.”
Unusual travel to work might be an exception, however. If an employee is required to come in to the office after hours to respond to an emergency, the DOL states that the employee might be entitled to pay for the time spent traveling if they must go “a substantial distance.”
An employee is entitled to pay for time spent traveling during work hours, and for work-related purposes. If an employee’s job routinely involves driving to make deliveries or service calls, they are entitled to pay for that time. Employees whose jobs do not usually involve this kind of travel are also entitled to pay. For example, if an employer tells an employee who usually works in the office all day to run several work-related errands, that employee's travel time should be paid.
Workers in these types of situations are entitled to pay for the time spent traveling from the office to the delivery, errand, or other destination, and the time spent returning to the office. If an employee travels from home directly to a service call, or goes directly home after the last service call of the day, that travel time might not be paid.
In a situation where an employee must travel for work, but will not stay overnight, the amount of travel time that is paid depends in part on how they are traveling. If the employee is flying to another city, they are entitled to pay for time spent at the airport and on the airplane. If they go to the office first, they might be entitled to pay for time spent traveling from the office to the airport. If they go directly from their home to the airport, however, that travel time is considered part of the daily commute, and is not paid.
When an employee must travel for business over multiple days, each of the above situations plays a role in what is considered paid time. Once again, a commute from home to the airport is not paid time, but travel time from the office to the airport would be paid.
Once the employee is in the air, they are entitled to pay for travel time during regular work hours. For example, if an employee normally works from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and takes a four-hour flight for work that leaves at 4 p.m., they should be paid for the one hour of the flight that occurs during normal work hours.
If the employee drives the entire way, they are entitled to pay for any time spent on the road during normal work hours, since nothing about that drive could be considered part of their normal commute. If they travel on a weekend, they are still entitled to pay for travel time that occurs between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., or their normal work hours. Even though it is a weekend, they are still traveling on their employer’s behalf.
After arriving at their destination, the employee is entitled to pay for the time they actually spend working. They are not entitled to pay for time spent eating at restaurants or sleeping in hotels, even though they are only doing those things because their employer sent them to another city.
Some states provide more generous rules than the FLSA when it comes to compensating travel time. And some companies pay their workers for time spent traveling even when they're not required to by law. To learn about the rules in your state, contact your state's labor department or an experienced employment attorney.
