Employer may need to pay employees for time spent driving

A California appellate court recently determined that a lower court shouldn't have accepted an employer's argument that certain employees didn't have to be paid for their commuting time to the first job of the day or for their drive home at the end of the day. Rather, the court of appeal stated there were factual disputes that precluded the dismissal of the employees' wage and hour claims without a trial.

Service techs commuted to jobsites in personal vehicles

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc., provides copying, printing, and scanning services and products. Service technicians employed by the company drive their personal vehicles with tools and parts to customer sites to repair copier machines and other devices. The service technicians usually don't report to an office at the beginning of the workday but instead drive from their homes to customers' locations, Konica Minolta's branch locations, or another location to obtain company-provided parts. At the end of the workday, the technicians usually drive from customers' sites back to their homes.

Konica Minolta didn't pay service technicians wages or reimburse them for mileage for commuting to their first work location in the morning or for commuting home from their final work location of the day when the commute fell within their assigned territory. However, if the first assignment of the day required a technician to travel to one of Konica Minolta's branches or to another location to pick up parts, the technician was paid for his time and mileage from that location to the first customer site.