Question

Employees of a county public works department used county-owned vehicles to travel to job sites where they inspected the work of subcontractors. The vehicles contained the tools and equipment the employees used on the job and served as their offices at the job sites. The employees were not allowed to drive the vehicles to their homes at the end of the day. Instead, they were required to bring them back to secure county-owned parking areas, where they also retrieved their own private vehicles. The employees were not paid for the time spent traveling from the remote parking areas to their first job site of the day. Nor were they compensated for the time spent bringing the vehicles back to the parking areas from their last job site of the day. Is this travel time compensable under the FLSA? Why or why not?

Answer 1

                        The Fair Labour Standards Act of 1938 refers to the US labour law that creates the right to minimum wages, a ‘time and a half’ overtime pay when the employee works for more than forty hours per week and prohibits the employment of minors in ‘oppressive child labour’ situations. The law is applicable to employees who are engaged in the interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce. The act clearly mentions that the employee should be compensated for the additional costs incurred for the travel time between the job shifts.

                        In the given case, it is known that the public works department would own a public vehicle and the same could be used only for inspection purposes or purposes that would satisfy the job needs. They should be brought back to the original destination after the job is being completed as it belongs to the government property and hence could not be used on a private basis. But, there are many situations wherein the job sites would be far away from the location of the employee’s residence and the employee would have to shift far away places in private vehicles of the employee so as to undertake the jobs. This could result in both time loss and money loss for the employee. The given case talks about the dismal situation in the economy wherein the employee is not being compensated for the same and thus causing severe disadvantages to the employee.

              

As it is being mentioned in the given FLSA, there should be compensation for the travel time between the job shifts as it is being done to undertake a certain job. Thus, here the employee can make use of the FLSA and make sure that he is rightly compensated for the above job.