DOL Issues Opinion Letters on Midday Travel, Pre-Commute Work Communications

In a pair of opinion letters, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division addressed when commuting time from home to work is compensable in the context of employees who work at both home and the office.

In the first letter (FLSA2026-9), an employer sought guidance from the agency about whether midday travel between an employee’s home and work office is worktime for which the employer must pay the employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), where the employee performs work at both locations and the midday travel is offered as a voluntary alternative to unpaid commuter travel that would otherwise occur before or after the employee’s workday. The employee would begin the day working from home, then commute to the office and continue working there.

The agency found that travel under three different scenarios was “normal” or “ordinary” commute time and therefore not compensable.

In the first scenario, the midday travel was offered to employees as an optional alternative to unpaid commuter travel at the beginning or end of their workday, which functioned as a scheduling flexibility for the benefit of the employee and thus could be excluded from their recorded worktime like any other “normal” or “ordinary” commute.

It was not necessary for a midday commute to reduce an employee’s commute time to be considered ordinary or normal, the DOL added; instead, it sufficed that the timing of such commuter travel was genuinely voluntary, as employees might have any number of reasons to adjust the timing of their daily commutes (for example, to avoid commuting during rush hour, or to remain at home due to a sick child or repair appointment).

The second scenario considered home-to-work travel when an employee volunteers to perform additional work during the early hours of the morning before leaving for a regular shift.

Nothing about the employee’s normal morning commute changed, the agency said. Just as in the first scenario, “the fact that the commute happens during the workday, rather than before or after it, takes place at the employee’s initiative and predominantly for the employee’s benefit. The commute would therefore remain ‘ordinary’ and need not be paid.”

A third scenario, involving an employee who catches the last bus and completes his assigned work upon arriving home, was also not compensable as long as the employee was not working while on the bus, the DOL opined.

The agency emphasized that nothing in the letter should be construed as a departure from the Department’s longstanding positions that travel from worksite to worksite during the workday is compensable and that if an employee is engaged in compensable work during a commute, time engaged in such tasks is compensable.

The DOL also took the opportunity to clarify that, as a general matter, an “ordinary” or “normal” commute represents a third category of time, in addition to off-duty time and bona fide meal breaks, that is not worktime even if it occurs during the continuous workday.

In a second letter (FLSA2026-10), the agency responded to a field service engineer who serviced MRI systems, who asked if he was entitled to payment for the time he spent receiving pages, calling clients and other engineers to schedule appointments, and driving from home to the first client appointment.

The DOL reached a mixed decision on the two scenarios presented.

Time spent receiving client-service request pages from the employer before performing other work-related activities was not compensable, the agency explained in FLSA2026-10, whether performed at home or during the commute.

“On the other hand, time spent calling clients to schedule and arrange the details of appointments, including scheduling other field service engineers, constitutes compensable hours worked,” the DOL wrote. “These activities are required by, and primarily benefit, [the employer]; therefore, they constitute work. Furthermore, they are a critical element of your primary responsibilities, and consequently are not incidental to your commute or otherwise preliminary but rather integral and indispensable to your principal activity of installing and servicing medical equipment at your employer’s clients’ locations.”

Unlike simply receiving pages, communicating with clients to schedule appointments was a necessary step to performing the services requested by them, the agency said, and the same was true of calling other field service engineers to ensure that clients’ service requests were fulfilled.

The agency also found that the employee’s travel from home to the first worksite was not part of an ordinary commute when it occurred after performing substantial work (lengthy client calls) and therefore was compensable travel time.

“Here, not only are both the time and manner of the travel based primarily on the employer’s needs rather than the employee’s choice, but your employer is also requiring you to engage in substantial work both immediately before the travel, when you spend most of an hour engaged in phone calls, and immediately after your travel, when you work at your first worksite of the day,” the DOL explained.

The agency distinguished this from a situation where an employee does not perform work before the commute; in that case, the commuting time would not be compensable. 

To read FLSA2026-09, click .

To read FLSA2026-10, click .

Why it matters: The DOL’s opinion letters provide helpful guidance for employers with hybrid office employees or field service employees who perform some of their duties, before, during or after commuting. The letters also provide a thorough summary of the state of the law on these issues.