An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 6 – Wage And Hour Laws

field trip is completed in one workday or in one week, non-exempt employees are entitled to be paid for all travel time and all hours worked for the school as a chaperone that exceed the

employee’s normal work hours. LCW Practice Advisor

An exception may exist for an employee who is also a parent of a student who is going on the trip, provided the employee goes voluntarily and is not performing any of his or her regular job duties on the field trip.

For example, a school asks non-exempt employees to volunteer to go on the annual trip to Washington D.C. during spring break as chaperones. The school pays for all travel expenses for the employees. During the first day, the volunteers and students catch a 6:00 a.m. flight which arrives in Washington D.C. at 3:00 p.m. local time. After checking into the hotel, the volunteers and students take a chartered bus to a local restaurant for a welcome dinner. Everyone returns to the hotel at 10:00 p.m. and the students are required to stay in their rooms for the rest of the night. Under this scenario, the non-exempt employees are entitled to be paid an hourly rate of at least minimum wage for all hours spent during the trip from their departure of 6:00 a.m. until they return home. They are also entitled to overtime pay for all overtime hours worked. LCW Practice Advisor

Schools should consider prohibiting non-exempt employees from traveling on field trips. In light of the California Supreme Court’s decision in Mendiola v. CPS Security Solutions, Inc ., non-exempt employees may be entitled to compensation for all time spent on the trip (including sleeping time) even if they are given “free time.” In contrast, there are no overtime issues raised by having an overtime-exempt employee travel on a field trip.

I. R EPORTING T IME P AY Employees may also be entitled to “reporting time pay” of at least two hours but no more than four if they arrive at work but are either not provided with work or only worked for less than half of their scheduled work day. 614 Reporting time pay is meant to guarantee at least partial compensation for an employee who reports to the school expecting to work a specified number of hours but who is deprived of that amount of work because of inadequate scheduling or lack of proper notice. 615 Determining when to provide reporting time pay requires the school to assess the employee’s scheduled shift and how long the employee has worked that day. For example, an employee is required to attend a mandatory meeting at work that is expected to last one and a half hours, but the employee only works one hour that day because the meeting ends a half hour early. Under this scenario, the employee is entitled to one hour of wages for the actual time worked. However, he would not be entitled to reporting pay time because he actually worked more than half the scheduled work time for that day. 616 Schools do not need to provide reporting time pay when school operations cannot commence or continue due to a threat to employees or property, when recommended by civil authorities, when public utilities fail to supply resources, or when there is an interruption of work outside of the employer’s control. 617

An Administrator’s Guide to California Private School Law ©2019 Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 174