© 2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP Massachusetts Wage & Hour Peculiarities, 2025 ed. | 41 of pay for travel time.247 The rate cannot be lower than the minimum wage and must be established prior to the time the travel occurs.248 Employers are advised to notify each employee of the travel rate in writing and obtain a signed acknowledgment before any travel occurs. a. Commuting Time An employee’s regular commute to and from work is generally not considered work time, and thus it is not compensable under either Massachusetts or federal law.249 Much of employee travel time other than an employee’s regular commute to and from work is compensable. The following are common examples of compensable travel time: “If an employee who regularly works at a fixed location is required, for the convenience of the employer, to report to a location other than his or her regular work site,” the employer must compensate the employee for all travel time in excess of the employee’s normal commuting time and for associated travel expenses.250 If an employee is required to report to a specified location to take transportation, the employer must compensate the employee for all time starting at the time the employee reports to the specified location and including the subsequent travel to and from the work site.251 If an employee is “required or directed to travel from one place to another after the beginning of or before the close of a work day,” the employer must compensate the employee for all travel time and for associated travel expenses.252 247 DOL Wage & Hour Opinion Letter FLSA1999 (Jan. 22, 1999); DLS Opinion Letter MW-2002-019 (June 28, 2002). 248 DOL Wage & Hour Opinion Letter FLSA1999 (Jan. 22, 1999); DLS Opinion Letter MW-2002-019 (June 28, 2002). 249 29 C.F.R. §§ 785.35-785.41; 454 C.M.R. § 27.04(4)(a). This can include time spent commuting to and from work between shifts. See DLS Opinion Letter MW-2002-019 (June 28, 2002). Where an employee works at home and then drives to a job site, the travel time may be compensable, even if it resembles a normal commute. See Dooley v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 307 F. Supp. 2d 234, 241-49 (D. Mass. 2004). 250 454 C.M.R. § 27.04(4)(b). See also DLS Opinion Letter MW-2001-012 (Oct. 9, 2001) (length of temporary reassignment is irrelevant). Firefighters who attended a twelve-week training program for the purpose of being able to perform their duties safely and effectively did not need to be compensated for their travel time. Taggart v. Town of Wakefield, 78 Mass. App. Ct. 421, 428 (2010). The training occurred over a sufficiently extended period that it became the employees’ regular work location, and the training was primarily for the firefighters’ benefit, rather than the “convenience” of the town. Id. 251 454 C.M.R. § 27.04(4)(c). However, commuting time does not become compensable where an employee travels to a location other than his or her work site in order to take optional company transportation from that location to the work site. For example, where an employer offers employees rides on a boat used to haul equipment to an island work site that is also accessible by public transportation, the time spent traveling on the boat is not compensable. DLS Opinion Letter MW-2002-007 (Mar. 7, 2002). See also DLS Opinion Letter MW-2002-016 (May 6, 2002) (opining that where employees have option of traveling directly to work site or commuting to main office to travel in company truck to work site, travel time is not compensable because it is optional). 252 454 C.M.R. § 27.04(4)(d); 29 C.F.R. § 785.38. For example, if employees are required to begin work at the employer’s main office to load trucks before traveling to their work site in a different location, the travel time from the main office to the work site is compensable. DLS Opinion Letter MW-2002-016 (May 6, 2002).
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