Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Travel time?

This is topic Travel time? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 03-25-2010, 12:31 PM:

What do you consider "Company" time compared to "Personal" time? I just had this discussion with a friend of mine.

His furthest theater that he services is almost 3 hours away from his home. He gets reimbursed for mileage. The travel time he doesn't get paid for. He is salaried and turns in his hours. He gets paid for overtime hours, but the travel time isn't included in his hours.

When I worked for Kerasotes, I only got in one arguement with my boss, and this came up. I wasn't getting paid anything for the travel time, I just wanted them to know how much I was gone. Because I was on the road so much, they began having me turn in a weekly log of where I had been. My boss brought up the fact that I can't include my drive time as work hours.

When I worked for Megasystems, That was probably the greatest work atmosphere ever. My boss would bitch me out for coming into the office after a long trip.

When I went to work for a Chicken Fryer Machine/street sign machine company, I got bitched out for one of my first trips for them. I was overseas and the trip back home started on Saturday morning. I arrived back home around 1 or 2 in the morning on a Sunday, so I only got a little sleep. I arrived to work 15 minutes late the next day, only to get bitched out. I tried to explain that I had just spent the last 12-14 days working 10-12 hour days only to be followed up by 30 hours of travel time to get home, sorry if I'm 15 minutes late for work, ......sorry rant off, I could go on, but I shouldn't

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 03-25-2010, 12:45 PM:

I charge time out till time in (except for the time sleeping eating drinking or womanizing [Smile]

If someone wants my services it costs them and there is no point traveling sometimes 10 hours for a 3 hour call

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 03-25-2010, 01:08 PM:

I was salaried, so travel time was not paid. I did get reimbursed for mileage at the IRS rate. Sometimes I'd travel half way around the world but I was only compensated for the trip to/from the airport.

Bargained for (hourly) employees were paid 6 hours to travel, which equated to the (then) longest non-stop flight in the US. To my knowledge, hourly employees never traveled outside of North America.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 03-25-2010, 02:28 PM:

I agree with Gordon... [thumbsup]

For service calls and when I was working hourly with someone else I ALWAYS charged travel time from my house to the job, the meter stopped running at the close of the work day so time to return home was on my dime. The exception was anything outside of Southern California, then it was charged "portal to portal."

Even when I worked for RCA Service we were paid for full travel time.

Richard you must have worked for some chicken-shit outfits... [Big Grin]

If I did contract work for a flat rate of course all travel was on me.

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 03-25-2010, 04:50 PM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
Even when I worked for RCA Service we were paid for full travel time.

Yup, same when they changed to NCS I got paid from when I left my house in the morning to when I got home minus the womanizing. I got salary plus overtime. If I drove three hours each way to a theatre for a three hour service call that was a 9 hour day.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 03-25-2010, 05:54 PM:

Sean, were you still with them when GE Computer Service took over the cinema service branch? If so I'm sure you remember a particular honcho from Cherry Hill NJ who was the biggest horse's ass I ever had to deal with, he had NO CLUE as to how cinemas operate and expected the techs to do their service calls as if we were IT techs...

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 03-25-2010, 06:33 PM:

No I joined the company after that when Chris Pierce owned it and was with them until shortly after Strong Int'l took them over. Fortunately I worked with some great people including Bud Shepard who was the VP and Andy Lizotte who was the regional supervising technician who was one of the smartest people I ever met. The whole northeast crew there was great. IMO some of the best technicians in the industry.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 03-25-2010, 06:57 PM:

Most of my tech work was in-town, so I didn't have many chances to deal with travel time.

When I traveled internationally (to Oz, Canada, and Japan), I was salaried so travel was just paid as part of the job. And we did have charge numbers for each of the projects we worked on, including sub-numbers for travel.

At home (in my good 'Vegas years) as a video control (VC or V2) contractor I billed travel days - half-days for anywhere in SoCal, a full-day for anywhere else. These were standard 10-hour days at my travel rate. For SoCal shoots I usually drove, though often the producer or UPM would arrange and cover air transport. But I still charged a day for travel time. Once in a while I'd fly myself to the shoot. Still charged a half day for travel time.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 03-25-2010, 07:13 PM:

Similar to Gordon. . . we charge for driving time, the same as working time. We do not normally charge mileage. (at $4/gallon I add a surcharge of one full tank.)

Employee time and billable time is always the same, except that employees get overtime after 8 hours. Customers usually don't share this; they get a break.

btw: I once worked for Altec (ASC Services) in Louisville. I was Union and was "hourly." Only problem is that I was never paid for "over 40" work at all, even though travel and work was done for the benefit of the Company.

At the time I quit, I investigated just how much they actually owed me in straight time back pay in case they did not like me becoming their competitor. In Kentucky, subject-to-call time was officially the same as duty or work time. Since I was subject to call 24 hours, 365 days per year, the amount was staggering not including "boost" pay or interest. The reason this mattters is that , on a scheduled 2 week vacation, I went to Germany and Austria. A theatre broke down at home; I was very nearly fired when I did not repair it "on my vacation." That is when I became aware that I was underpaid, not appreciated, and in fact in business for myself.

When I quit, then I could not only charge the customer, but I WOULD ACTUALLY BE PAID! Louis

Posted by Todd McCracken (Member # 4718) on 03-26-2010, 03:03 PM:

I get paid travel time from our Chatsworth offices to wherever I travel. I only live 1 mile from the office so it works out well.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 03-27-2010, 01:06 AM:

Our friend the Fair Labor Standards Act:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs22.pdf

quote:
Travel Time: The principles which apply in determining whether time spent in travel is compensable time depends upon the kind of travel involved.

Home to Work Travel: An employee who travels from home before the regular workday and returns to his/her home at the end of the workday is engaged in ordinary home to work travel, which is not work time.

Home to Work on a Special One Day Assignment in Another City: An employee who regularly works at a fixed location in one city is given a special one day assignment in another city and returns home the same day. The time spent in traveling to and returning from the other city is work time, except that the employer may deduct/not count that time the employee would normally spend commuting to the regular work site.

Travel That is All in a Day's Work: Time spent by an employee in travel as part of their principal activity, such as travel from job site to job site during the workday, is work time and must be counted as hours worked.

Travel Away from Home Community: Travel that keeps an employee away from home overnight is travel away from home. Travel away from home is clearly work time when it cuts across the employee's workday. The time is not only hours worked on regular working days during normal working hours but also during corresponding hours on nonworking days. As an enforcement policy the Division will not consider as work time that time spent in travel away from home outside of regular working hours as a passenger on an airplane, train, boat, bus, or automobile.

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 03-27-2010, 11:02 AM:

When I was with NCS as I said we got paid for our travel time but time spent at home either working on paperwork/researching a technical problem/troubleshooting with a customer over the phone was not counted as work time. We were also on call up to six days a week until 11pm and were only paid if we actually had to go out on a call. All of this was fine with me though. I would try to fill out as much of my paperwork as possible at the job site, same with performing research either on-line or over the phone I would try to do at the location. As far as phone troubleshooting I looked at it this way...

If I wanted to get paid I could just take the problem and go out on the call but if I did not want to go out at 10pm to a theatre 2 hours away it was in *MY* best interest to troubleshoot with them over the phone. I never had any issue with the pay policy and found it very fair. We also had the perk of being able to submit a receipt for our lunch if we worked more than 8 hours in a day (including travel time). When I was there NCS was a great outfit to work for.

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 03-31-2010, 12:57 PM:

From a UK perspective:

The UK minimum wage legislation states

quote:
Time workers must be paid the NMW for hours spent:
*at work and required to be working or on standby near your workplace (but not on rest breaks)
*when kept at the workplace but unable to work because of machine breakdown
*travelling on business during normal working hours
training or travelling to training during normal working hours
*awake and working, during ‘sleeping time’

and the working time directive entitles staff to work no more than 48 hours per week including business related travel time (although it does still allow travelling outside normal working hours). Staff are able to opt out of this in most industries.

The employer has some responsibility to ensure that any staff driving is fit to do so. Forcing staff to drive home after a full day of work (and time taken to drive there in the morning) could leave them open to claims if the staff has an driving accident.