Pay my wage for travel to the job? Certainly, if I've got to take your bus!

I keep track of the google searches that are made that result in visitors to our site. One recent search indicated that someone had a question about whether an employer was required to pay for travel to the workplace. A recent case addressing that issue is Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal. 4th 575, 579 (Cal., 2000).

In Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal. 4th 575, 579 (Cal., 2000) the California Supreme Court evaluated an employer's practice of busing farm workers to the work site. The Court adopted the rule that when an employee is "subject to the control of an employer" the employee is entitled to pay, regardless of whether the employee is sufferred to work or permitted to work.

The defendant Royal Packing Company was a agricultural company in northern California. The plaintiffs were present and past agricultural employees of Royal. Royal required plaintiffs to meet for work each day at specified parking lots or assembly areas. After plaintiffs met at these departure points, Royal transported them, in buses that Royal provided and paid for, to the fields where plaintiffs actually worked. At the end of each day, Royal transported plaintiffs back to the departure points on its buses. Royal's work rules prohibited employees from using their own transportation to get to and from the fields.

The laborers claimed that they were entitled to compensation (including overtime wages and penalties) for the time they spent traveling to and from the fields. Specifically, the employees claimed Royal should have paid them for the time they spent (1) assembling at the departure points; (2) riding the bus to the fields; (3) waiting for the bus at the end of the day; and (4) riding the bus back to the departure points.

The fact that the employer refused to allow the employees to use their own vehicles resulted in the classification of the travel time as "compulsory." This reference to distinguish between travel to and from a work site that an employer controls and requires, and an ordinary commute from home to work and back that employees take on their own. Accordingly, this compulsory travel time did not include the time employees spent commuting from home to the departure points and from the departure points back again.


Interpreting the plain language of "hours worked" in the relevant wage order, the Court found that employees' compulsory travel time, which includes the time they spent waiting for Royal's buses to begin transporting them, was compensable. Royal required plaintiffs to meet at the departure points at a certain time to ride its buses to work, and it prohibited them from using their own cars, subjecting them to verbal warnings and lost wages if they did so. By " 'direct[ing]' " and " 'command[ing]' " plaintiffs to travel between the designated departure points and the fields on its buses, Royal " 'control[led]' " them within the meaning of "hours worked" under the wage order. (Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal. 4th 575, 587 (Cal., 2000).)

Moral: Don't make your employees take your bus if you don't want to pay them for their travel time.