Quick Reference Compensable Work Chart
What time must employees be paid for? Use the chart below for a quick reference.
Time spent during working hours
Compensable:
- Coffee and snack breaks
- Fire drills
- Grievance adjustment during time employee is required to be on premises
- Meal periods if employees are not relieved of duties, if not free to leave posts or if too short to be useful (less than 1/2 hour)
- Meal periods of 24-hour on-call employees
- Medical attention on plant premises or if employer directs outside treatment
- Meetings to discuss daily operations problems
- Rest periods of 20 minutes or less
- Retail sales product meetings sponsored by employer
- Show-up time if employees are required to remain on premises before being sent home
- Sleeping time if tour of duty is less than 24 hours
- Stand-by time-remaining at post during lunch period or temporary shut down
- Suggestion systems
- Walking to the production area after donning required work gear
Travel:
- From job site to job site
- From work site to outlying job
- To customers
- From preliminary instructional meeting to work site
Waiting
- by homeworker to deliver or obtain work
- by truck driver standing guard while loading
- for work after reporting at a required time
- while on duty
- to take off protective work gear at the end of the day
Noncompensable:
- Absence for illness, holiday or vacation
- Meal periods of 1/2 hour or longer if relieved of all duties and free to leave post (but can be confined to plant premises)
- Medical attention by employee choice of outside doctor
- Shutdown for regular maintenance
- Sleeping time up to eight hours if tour of duty is 24 hours or longer, if agreement to exclude sleep time exists, facilities for sleeping are furnished, at least five hours of sleep are possible during scheduled period, and interruptions to perform duties are counted as hours worked
- Union meetings concerning solely internal union affairs
- Voting time (unless required by state law)
- Waiting after relieved of duty for a specified period of time that allows employee to engage in personal activity
Time spent before, after, or between regular work hours
Compensable:
- Arranging or putting merchandise away
- Bank employees waiting for audit to finish
- Changing clothes, showering or washing if required by the nature of the work (such as job with chemicals requires bathing for worker health)
- Clearing cash register or totaling receipts
- Discussing work problems at shift change
- Distributing work to work benches
- Equipment maintenance before or after shift
- Getting steam up in plant
- Homework under contract with employer
- Make-ready work, preparatory work necessary for principal activity
- On-call time if employee must stay on or near premises so as to have liberty restricted or not use time as pleases
- Photography and fingerprinting for identification purposes
- Physical exam required for continued service
- Suggestions developed pursuant to assignment
- Travel time to customer on after-hour emergency
Noncompensable:
- Changing clothes, washing or showering for employees' convenience
- Homework of which the employer has no knowledge
- Meal periods while on out-of-town business
- Medical attention by company doctor even if injury was at work
- Obtaining equipment from lockers where lockers are not recommended or required
- On-call time when only telephone number to be reached or other similar contact device is required so that employee can come and go as pleases
- Opening plant and turning on lights and heat
- Preemployment tests
- Retail sales meeting sponsored by manufacturer if attendance voluntary
- Reporting early to promptly relieve prior shift
- Time between whistle and start of work
- Trade school attendance
- Training programs sponsored by employer if outside regular work hours, attendance is voluntary, employee does no productive work while attending and program is not directly related to employee's present job (as distinguished from teaching another job or additional skill)
Travel time:
- From home to work site or vice versa (even if employer provides transportation)
- From plant entrance to work site
- From time clock to work site
- To and from dressing room
- From outlying job to home
Unauthorized overtime if prohibited and without employer's knowledge
Voluntary attendance at government- sponsored safety meetings
Voluntary attendance at industry meeting to keep abreast of technological change
Waiting:
- for paycheck
- at time clock
- to start work at designated time after arriving early
- to put on first piece of required protective equipment prior to the start of the workday
Reprinted with permission. © CCH
34,275, TOOL: Compensable work chart What time must employees be paid for? Use the chart below for a quick reference; for additional explanation, refer to 34,270. Time spent during working hours Compensable: l Coffee and snack breaks l Fire drills l Grievance adjustment during time employee is r
Quick Reference Compensable Work Chart
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