When union employees hit the road in California, CBAs may be tossed aside

California Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) Wage Order No. 16-2001 prohibits union employees from waiving the right to compensation for employer-mandated travel time as part of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), the California Court of Appeal recently ruled. In other words, all employees, regardless of any CBA’s terms, must receive at least the minimum wage for travel time.

Facts

Carlos Gutierrez was a journeyman scaffold worker employed by Brand Energy Services. He was assigned to work on projects at Northern California refineries owned by Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Tesoro, and Valero. He and his coworkers were required to travel to and from work on Brand’s employee shuttle.

The terms of the CBA at issue, negotiated by the employees’ union, Carpenters Local Union 152, and Brand, provided the employer would pay for postshift, but not preshift, travel time. The arrangement was intended to reflect the practice of “in on the employee’s time, out on the company’s.” Consistent with that approach, the CBA deemed time spent traveling to the employee’s first place of work within the refinery as noncompensable commuting time.

Gutierrez sued claiming that, regardless of what the CBA said, preshift travel time (roughly 30-40 minutes per day) was compensable time the union couldn’t negotiate away as part of a CBA. He argued the failure to pay any wages, including minimum wage, for the employer-mandated travel time violated Labor Code provisions requiring the timely payment of wages owed and accurate wage statements and also was an unfair business practice.