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FLSA Travel Time: The Legalities Of Compensating Employees For Travel

New York State employers have a number of obligations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Among those many organizations deal with each day are overtime pay calculations and the intersection of state and federal minimum wage laws. FLSA travel time rules may come up less frequently in some companies, but they can affect both of these core considerations. Faulty compliance practices regarding FLSA travel time can lead to costly wage and hour claims. If your business needs employee travel on a regular basis, consider discussing your FLSA travel time handling with an experienced New York business law attorney with Schwab & Gasparini. You can contact us at our offices conveniently located throughout New York State by calling (914) 304-4353 in Hudson Valley or White Plains, (518) 591-4664 in Albany, or (315) 422-1333 in Syracuse.

The Fair Labor Standards Act and Travel Compensation

As many New York State employers will already know, the Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal law that sets a national floor for minimum wages, mandates overtime pay thresholds, and specifies exceptions to both of these sets of requirements concerning employee compensation. Behind this deceptively simple summary, however, there are a number of different provisions concerning what counts as working time, how calculations of an employee’s work hours must be made, and even the type of records that must be maintained on a company’s employees, dependent on age groups, immigration status, industry overtime or wage exemptions, and more.

As a result of all these factors, it is not unusual for even experienced New York employers who have been managing substantial teams for many years to encounter new situations whose specific considerations they have never previously needed to address. For New York business owners and entrepreneurs just starting out, meanwhile, the legalities of employee compensation under almost any circumstances will inevitably be new, and raise procedural questions concerning their compliance obligations.

Employee Compensation Rules: Overtime and Minimum Wages

The basic principle behind federal minimum wage provisions is that employees are entitled to a certain minimum amount for every hour of their time that is controlled by the employer. “Controlled by the employer” is a key consideration here, as the minimum wage requirement applies not only to time spent in ordinary job tasks but also to such periods as lunch hours in which employees are not free to leave the premises, or mandatory meetings held after the close of the business day.

FLSA Minimum Wage Requirements Apply to All Hours Worked

The same standards also apply regardless of where the work happens, covering work in office buildings, on field sites, and from home or other remote locations. Employees who are not subject to one of the relatively few FLSA minimum wage exemptions are entitled to the same rate of pay regardless of the location of their work, the time of day when it is done, or the type of task assigned.

Highest Wage Prevails for Wage and Hour Compliance

In states, like New York, whose minimum wage is higher than the federal floor, the United States Department of Labor (DOL) bases enforcement under its Wage and Hour Division (WHD) on the state minimum. To put it another way: When there is a difference between federal minimum wage and state or local laws, the highest wage prevails.

Overtime Threshold

Under FLSA overtime pay requirements, non-exempt employees are also entitled to compensation for their time that increases once hours worked in a workweek exceed a certain threshold. The logic here is that long hours within a compressed timeframe impose a heavier burden than the same number of hours worked over a longer period. The personal consequences for everything from sleep hygiene to child care to grocery shopping to exercise routine are far more significant for a seven-day period in which 65 hours are taken up with work for an employer than would be the case when the same number of hours were spread over half as many days.

In most industries (long-haul trucking is a partial exception, owing to the well-documented safety hazards of fatigued driving), United States labor laws deal with this reality not by imposing strict restrictions on the number of hours employers can legally require employees to work within a set period, but by setting overtime pay requirements that simultaneously increase the reward for employees as the toll on their personal lives intensifies, and makes excessive overtime demands an unattractive proposition for employers by ensuring that keeping the same individuals working without meaningful time off quickly becomes financially burdensome. The result is a system in which employers are incentivized to limit requests for overtime work to situations that are the exception, rather than the rule, while employees are assured of receiving additional compensation to offset the disproportionate increase in the inconvenience to their own schedules.

FLSA Employee Compensation Rules: Understanding Hours Worked

Both minimum wage compliance and accurate overtime pay calculations depend heavily on a clear understanding of what the DOL considers hours worked. According to the DOL’s FLSA Travel Time Fact Sheet, travel time may or may not be considered working time, depending on the circumstances and the purpose of the travel. Owing to the sometimes complex considerations involved in FLSA compliance, you may wish to review your situation with a New York business law attorney if you have questions specific to the factors present in your particular situation. Generally, however, many New York employers are likely to find the following principles a useful starting place for reviewing their internal practices for compliance with FLSA travel time pay requirements.

FLSA Travel Time: Daily Commute

An employee’s ordinary daily commute from his or her home to a single, fixed-location work site (such as an office) is not considered compensable travel under the FLSA. Employees are generally responsible for these costs and employers are not usually required to consider this commuting time as hours worked. If your business maintains multiple locations – as Schwab & Gasparini does – and you wish to transfer an individual employee’s regular working location from one of these sites to another, then compensating the employee for any additional travel time is not typically an FLSA requirement, but for reasons of general workplace harmony it may be wise to confer with the employee prior to making this kind of change in working arrangement.

FLSA Travel Time: Travel During the Working Day

An employee’s travel for the employer during the working day is generally considered part of the “hours worked” for that employee. The time spent on the road for such tasks as moving from one service call to another, or taking documents across town, or running errands for the company to retrieve office supplies, is compensable under federal minimum wage laws and counts toward the 40 hours that make up the weekly threshold for overtime pay per non-exempt employee. Depending on the circumstances, the business may also owe the employee compensation for the use of his or her vehicle, or in some situations the individual may be able to claim mileage as a business expense. Consider speaking with an attorney to evaluate your obligations for employee travel compensation if the company does not supply transportation.

FLSA Travel Time: One-Day Location Assignment

An employee’s one-day travel to a location other than his or her usual place of employment is generally considered working time to the extent that the employee’s travel time to the single-day location exceeds his or her ordinary travel time to the usual place of employment. If an employee in Syracuse normally spends about an hour commuting to the office in the morning and about 45 minutes commuting home at night, then a single-day location assignment that took 45 minutes each way would not require additional compensation.

A single-day location whose commute required an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and 45 minutes at night would add 75 minutes, or one and one-quarter hours, to the employee’s hours worked for that workweek. The employee would be due compensation for their time at their regular rate of pay (but in no case less than the applicable minimum wage), and if the travel time pushed the employees total hours for that work week over 40, then the compensation would need to be calculated at one and a half times the employee’s regular rate of pay, beginning from the point at which the hours worked reached the weekly 40 hour threshold.

Navigating the Legalities of FLSA Travel Time Effectively

Employers in New York may understandably have questions about the legalities involved in compensating employees for time spent traveling for work. The specifics always depend on the circumstances of the particular situation, but for most purposes, the bottom line is that FLSA travel time requirements for employee compensation are designed to ensure that employers are not sending their employees hither and thither and refusing to pay them for the time spent in transit. Generally, time employees spend coming from their homes to their regular place of employment at the start of the work day, and any time they spend returning or taking detours for their own activities after the work day is over, will be considered an ordinary part of the employees's commute and FLSA travel time requirements will not require that time to be paid.

By the same token, the time an employee spends traveling to other locations at their manager's behest, and returning therefrom, is not usually a part of the employee's usual commuting time and must be compensated. The company may also be expected to provide a per diem or mileage reimbursement, depending on the circumstances. Any changes of location made at the company's request or on company business during the course of the working day are normally considered a part of the employee's regularly scheduled shift, and although the company may, again, owe transit costs the per hour compensation, is generally the same as if the employee had remained at a single location for the full working day.

Consult With an Attorney

Some industries may have more complex or intensive travel requirements than others, and exemptions to FLSA coverage for certain types of employees can also complicate the picture. To discuss the specifics of your situation and gain tailored FLSA travel time insights, reach out to a New York business law attorney with Schwab & Gasprini. Reach us in Syracuse at (315) 422-1333, in Hudson Valley and White Plains at (914) 304-4353, and in Albany at (518) 591-4664.

Mon Sep 1 2025, 12:00am