Under federal law, ordinary travel between home and work is generally not paid time, while travel that is part of the workday, including travel from one job site to another, generally is hours worked.
It depends on how restricted you are. If you must remain on the employer’s premises, or so close to them that you cannot use the time effectively for your own purposes, you are working and the time is paid.
Yes, where your employer requires the training or the meeting. Minnesota treats training time as hours worked, and the Department of Labor and Industry lists on-the-job training and required meetings among the time an employer must pay for.
Hours worked includes all the time your employer requires or permits you to work, which reaches well beyond the hours between clock-in and clock-out. Training time, call time, cleaning time, waiting time and any other time you must be on the premises or performing duties are all counted.
Both can apply to the same job at the same time. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act are separate statutes with separate coverage tests, and satisfying one does not answer the other.
Uniform pay practices can create common questions across a group of employees. A rounding rule, an automatic meal deduction, a bonus left out of the overtime rate or a classification applied to a job title reaches everyone it covers. Proving that a policy existed does not automatically prove every employee’s claim, and it does not by itself establish that a class should be certified.
