The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) may be one of the most complex and poorly understood employment laws on the books. Not only does it explain which employees should be exempt and which not, it also governs travel pay. Here’s a sampling of recent subscriber questions on this topic, and our legal experts’ answers.

Q: Do we have to pay employees for time spent traveling between home visits that are a required part of their jobs?

A: Under FLSA, the Portal-to-Portal Act provides that traveling to at the beginning of a shift and from at shift’s end the sites where work is performed is not work time. Other travel tie associated with an individual’s performance of his or her job is generally paid work time. The key to identifying whether travel during the work day is compensable is determining whether an employee is engaged in travel as part of the employer’s principal activity or for the convenience of the employer. For nonexempt employees, travel time that is work time is subject to both the minimum wage and overtime pay requirements of FLSA.

In the situation you describe, it appears that travel time from an employee’s home to the first home visit would be considered commuting time, not work time. But if an employee first reports to a central site and then travels to a home visit, the travel time from the site to the home would be considered work time.

Q: An employee is on call for evenings and weekends. If he drives 45 miles one way to answer a call, do we pay him for that travel time?

A: Here’s a quote from FLSA regulations: “There may be instances when travel from home to work is overtime. For example, if an employee who has gone home after completing his day’s work is subsequently called out at night to travel a substantial distance to perform an emergency job for one of his employer’s customers, all time spent on such travel is working time. [However, regulators] are taking no position on whether travel to the job and back home by an employee who receives an emergency call outside of his regular hours to report back to his regular place of business to do a job is working time.”

It seems from your question that the employee is traveling to a customer’s location for the emergency, and although the regulations don’t define a “substantial distance,” it’s likely that 90 miles round trip would be seen as a substantial distance. So, the employee should be paid for the travel time. If, instead, he was traveling to your place of business, we’d recommend you consult your employment counsel for advice.

Q: An hourly employee travels by air from New York to Georgia for a 3-week assignment. What are the pay requirements for travel time?

A: According to FLSA regulations, travel that keeps an employee away from home overnight is “travel away from home” that is paid work time if and when it “cuts across the employee’s workday.” That work time is not only hours worked on regular workdays during normal work hours, but also during the same hours on nonwork days.