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What Counts as Hours Worked?
Understanding Your Work Place Activities
Have you ever wondered if you should be getting paid for the 20 minutes you came in early because you had to drop your child off at school? How about for that salad you had at your desk while monitoring the phones? For that seminar or tradeshow you attended? Taking phone calls at home? For travel time? In most of these cases, you should be.
In employment law, “hour worked” means the time during which one is employed, and for which the employee should be paid. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) defines this as to “suffer or permit” to work. State law often defines “hours worked” as the time during which an employee is under the employer’s control.
If the employer knows or has reason to know that the employee is doing something productive, then that time is “hours worked.” Furthermore, the employer must specifically forbid the employee from coming in early, eating lunch at her desk, or doing some kind of extra “voluntary” work. If not, then that time is compensable.
Under the FLSA, an employee must be given a 10-minute break for every 4 hours worked. However, lunch time is not paid. The employee must be completely free during lunch time, or it will count as “hours worked.”
Commute time is not paid, because the law treats this as a personal decision of where to live. However, any travel time to another business locale must be paid, including overnight work (minus sleep time, eating time, commute time, and any other personal time). On-call employees may count stand-by time as “hours worked” if they are not free to engage in personal activities during that time. Thus, “hours worked” depends on whether you are doing something productive for your employer.
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