Hours would have added up to over 40 in a workweek

For the purposes of calculating overtime, the Dept. of Labor doesn’t care where employees work – just who they’re working for. And that can lead to a lot of confusion for multisite employers.

A phoenix-area restaurant owner learned that the hard way when it had to pay out $141K for violating the overtime provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The restaurant, Wally’s American Pub and Grille, had two locations.

The employer didn’t add together hours for kitchen staff and servers who worked at both locations. That meant, in some cases, records didn’t show that employees worked more than 40 hours in a week – and no overtime was paid.

The employer also failed to compensate workers for the time spent traveling between the two locations.

That led to $141,544 in back pay and damages – plus $2,805. In civil penalties.

40 hours, no matter where

Regardless of specific locations, nonexempt employees need to be compensated for the time they spend working. And that time needs to be tracked accurately.

Sometimes you’ll need to include time spent traveling from location to location as well if it’s part of an employee’s principle activity.

Once those hours go over 40 for given workweek – regardless of the location or type of work being done – time-and-a-half should kick in.