Simple labor law question

[mrasgt]

Ok, This should be an easy one. I'm looking for input from anyone with experience in this area.

After working your regular 40 hours in one week, you go to training that has been approved and/or assigned by the chief.

The academy is approximately one hour away from your home. The training day lasts 8 hours, you return the department issued cruiser to the office, and your day has ended with a total of ten hours including travel time to and from the academy.

Fedael law says that you can not be paid for normal travel time from home to work and back.

Our contract does not offer anything specific regarding pay for travel time.

The officer in this example gets paid for eight hours O.T. Just for the class time.

Note: Traveling in a department car, if you were to get in a accident, would'nt workers comp cover you? If so, are you not "working"?

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[Chief Wiggum]

I travel back and forth to work everyday in a take home car and don't get paid for it.

[m_chevy]

The officer should be thankful they didn't tell him to drive his own car.

[pkagel]

I don't think this is as easy of a question as you may think. You would have to check the labor laws in Maine to find out for sure. I would think that since it is assigned work and you are essentially extended your work hours by 10 hours that you would get paid for the whole time. If you left from the academy going straight home then you wouldn't get paid for the time between the academy and home. This is just an opinion, take it as you will, but that is how it should work. Think of it this way, you come into work and work for 4 hours and they tell you to drive over to the academy and work for 3. With your hour commute your going to be on the clock so it should be the same in this case.

As an aside, if you drove your POV you would be able to deduct milage on your taxes.

[mrasgt]

We are not allowed to use our own vehicles because they don't want to pay miliage.