Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/34592
26 • JULY 2011 • WORLD FENCE NEWS The laws concerning compensable working hours can be confusing, to say the least, but the fair and accurate determination of compensable work- ing hours is a major concern in the fencing industry for both employer and employee. And the laws apply to both hourly and salaried employees. Calculating fair pay and compensation - pt. 2 BY TOM LUBY, PROFIT BUILDERS INTERNATIONAL In the fence industry, one of the most troublesome and difficult to un- derstand compensation issues involves work time and travel time, both to and from work and/or job sites and travel during the work day. Last month we discussed a num- ber of areas including travel cate- gories, compensation for employees while traveling “portal to portal” and between jobsites. This month, we take a look at ad- ditional travel related categories and typical compensation practices. Special assignment travel The one-day special assignment travel category typically applies when an employer requires an employee who typically works at a fixed location to report for a day or more than one day to an alternate work site which is more than 30 miles (48 km) from his/her primary work location. In this case that travel time is compensable. There are exceptions however. Consider the following scenario; A fencing contractor in Miami Beach employees six two-man crews. The regular working hours are from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. The general manager gives three of these crews a one-day assignment to install a vinyl privacy fence at Dis- neyworld in Orlando. 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All the employees’ time is com- pensable from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., with the exception of the 30-minute lunch break, which is not compensable. Also consider this: in some states any time over 8 hours of work in any given workday must be compensable at time-and-a-half (Florida, New York and California, for example). In other states only time after 40 hours in any given work week is com- pensable at time and a half. Be careful here and check the laws in your state to be sure. Another thing to remember: if one of the crew members is required to pick up one or more employees, that employee’s time would be compensa- ble from the minute he or she picked up the first employee until the time they dropped off the last employee at the end of the workday. Again, all work related activities are included. If they are “car pooling” and it is a voluntary gesture by the employee, that is not compensable. One word of caution. In our in- dustry there are some grey areas in this portion of the law. Remember, I said that the one-day special assignment rule applies only to employees who work at a permanent fixed location. Because crews may report every day to the staging area of the yard to pick up their supplies for the day, and then be sent out on various assign- ments in a wide radius, they could be considered fixed or non-fixed employ- ment personnel, depending on your point of view. If the employees are, in fact, con- sidered non-fixed employment per- sonnel, the travel time would not be compensable, as the one day special assignment rule only applies to fixed location workers. I discussed this issue several years ago with my corporate attorney and even he was unsure of the exact inter- pretation of the law in this matter. Together we concluded that if the crews need to report directly to a work site that is outside their normal travel parameters, that travel time should then be compensable. If, however, the crews have a one or more day temporary assignment to report directly to a job site that is within their normal travel parameters, that travel time should not be compen- sable. Overnight travel The overnight travel rule, as the name implies, applies to employees whose work keeps them away from home for one or more nights. During overnight trips, the time an employee spends as a passenger during typical working hours must be compensated, because the employee is substituting travel time for other duties. Employers are not required to compensate workers for travel time outside normal working hours unless the employee is required to drive. When taking an overnight trip the employer is only required to pay wages for time spent for normal work- ing hours, unless the employee actu- ally works or is engaged in work related duties for longer than his or her normal working hours, in which case the extra hours would be compensable. As I mentioned, the only excep- tion to this rule is if the employee is re- quired to drive, and in that case he or she is entitled to full compensation for all the hours traveled. However if the employee volun- tarily chooses to drive he or she is only entitled to compensation for normal working hours.