San Francisco Employment Law Firm Blog
Your employer sends you to Texas for a training course. The company pays for your airfare, hotel, meals, and other travel expenses. The training ends, and you fly back to California. Does your employer have to pay you for the hours you spend traveling home? And if the trip takes long enough, could you also be entitled to overtime? For California employees, the answer may be yes.
One common source of confusion is the difference between reimbursement of travel expenses and compensation for travel time. An employer might pay for your plane ticket, hotel, rental car, meals, and other expenses. That does not necessarily satisfy the employer’s obligation to pay wages for your time.
The separate question is whether the employee’s travel itself constitutes compensable working time. California generally focuses on whether an employee is subject to the employer’s control. When an employer requires a nonexempt employee to travel somewhere for work, the time spent traveling may constitute compensable hours worked—even though the employee isn’t performing his or her ordinary job duties while sitting on an airplane or traveling to the destination. This can be particularly important when an employee is required to attend an out-of-town conference, training program, meeting, or other company event. Federal travel-time rules can produce a different analysis. California employers therefore should not assume that compliance with federal wage law necessarily means they have complied with California law.
What If the Training Is for the Employee’s Advancement?
Calling a course an opportunity for the employee’s “advancement” does not necessarily answer the wage question. The circumstances matter. Was attendance genuinely optional? Could the employee decline without consequences? Did the employer select the program and send the employee there? Was attendance expected as part of the employee’s job or advancement within the company? The more the employer requires, directs, or controls the trip, the stronger the argument that associated travel constitutes compensable time. A genuinely voluntary educational opportunity may present a different situation.
What About the Flight Home?
Employers sometimes assume that even if they must compensate the employee for traveling to the event, the return trip is different. It generally isn’t that simple. If the employee was required to travel away from home for a company-directed event, the fact that the employee is now returning home does not automatically transform the return trip into an ordinary commute home from work. The outbound and return portions of a required business trip should both be analyzed under California’s rules governing compensable travel time.
Can Travel Time Result in Overtime?
Potentially, yes. Once travel qualifies as compensable time, those hours generally must be considered when determining the employee’s total hours worked.
For a California nonexempt employee, that can potentially trigger overtime based on the employee’s hours during the workday or workweek. This can become significant with air travel. Getting to the airport, waiting for a flight, flying several hours, making a connection, and completing the trip home can consume most of a day. The precise compensable period, however, depends on the circumstances. Personal activities and other periods during which the employee is genuinely relieved of employer control may require separate treatment.
Travel Time Does Not Necessarily Have to Be Paid at the Employee’s Normal Rate
There is another important point for employers. Compensable travel time does not necessarily have to be paid at the employee’s usual hourly rate. California employers may, under appropriate circumstances, establish a separate rate for travel time, assuming the arrangement complies with minimum-wage and other applicable requirements and is properly established before the work is performed. However, employers should not attempt to create a lower travel rate retroactively after the travel has already occurred. A separate travel rate can also complicate the calculation of the employee’s regular rate for overtime purposes.
The Practical Lesson
When analyzing a particular trip, some of the most important questions are:
- Was the trip required or genuinely voluntary?
- Who selected the destination and event?
- How much control did the employer exercise over the travel?
- What portions of the trip were spent on personal activities?
- How many total hours did the employee work that day and week?
- Did the employer establish a lawful separate travel-time rate in advance?
A company paying for your airline ticket answers the expense-reimbursement question. It does not necessarily answer the wage question.