I am a Field Engineer in GA. and I am salaried non-exempt. I ues a company van to go from site to site and I keep the van at my house, so in essence, I work from home.

The company policy was that we got paid from the time that we left our house in the morning, until the time we returned home in the evening. Our working hours were from 8 A.M. until 5 P.M.
Anything before or after those hours was considered overtime.

In an effort to reduce costs, the company has decided that we will not be paid for 1 hour of travel time to and from a job site, even though we are driving the company vehicle. So I am working for free for 10 hours a week.

The company states that if we were working at an office, we would not get paid to travel to and from work, so why should we get that now?

But our job description is to drive to the customer site and perform the work and to drive home with the van.

Is this legal for a company to not pay someone for a part of the day while doing their job? I can't see how that would be legal.

And where does the arbitrairy hour come from? The average commute can be less or more obiviously.

It's arbitrary because the employer is ignorant of the law.

It is correct that the employer does not legally have to pay you for your drive time from home to your first appt., and from your last appt. to home. Those are not considered work hours by federal law or by any state.

However, they must pay you for all hours actually worked, which includes driving from job site to job site. If it takes more than an hour, so be it.

Also, something else just came to mind. When you say your work hours are 8-5, does that mean you are expected to be at your first client site at 8 a.m.? and not leave your last client site until 5 p.m.? What happens to your pay if your first appt is at 9:30 and it only takes 30 minutes to get there? Or your last appt. is completed at 3 p.m. and it takes you only an hour to get home?

The FE's salary is based on 40 hrs. regardless of the work schedule/travel time. So if we are not busy, we are "on call" from 8 until 5, and are still paid.

So technically, the employer does not have to pay us for the first call out from our house, or for any of the travel time home at all?
Because sometimes are jobs many hours away,.i.e. 2-4 hours.

So even though the company bills the customer for our travel time, we still lose that aribtrary hour to the site?

Thank you for the info.

I'm still not sure how the hour fits in. All I can tell you is that you can read the law for yourself here. Actually, Section 785.34 http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/12feb20041500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2004/julqtr/pdf/29cfr785.33.pdf