Claims for Overtime While in Travel Status

An advance decision was requested on the claims of 30 civilian employees of the Naval Weapons Support Center. These were claims for overtime while the employees were in a travel status for the period their travel was interrupted by a blizzard. Clarification was also requested of two prior decisions. In the first decision, GAO held that some overtime was allowed for employees exempt from coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for waiting time attributable in part to inclement weather. In the second decision, GAO denied overtime for additional traveltime caused by a blizzard. The agency advised that a typical claim was as follows. The employee is exempt from coverage under FLSA and was returning from a temporary duty assignment. Due to a blizzard, the employee was held over until Saturday morning, instead of leaving Thursday evening. The employee's regular tour of duty was 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. If the time is available for an employee's personal use, it generally is not compensable as hours of work. In the first decision, the employee was compensated for 3 hours normal waiting time because that time was viewed as not available for his personal use. In this case, the employee received compensation at his regular rates for Thursday and Friday. Therefore, even assuming that the need to wait for connections or to make alternate travel arrangements would have required 3 hours, he had already been compensated at the regular rates for a period far greater than 3 hours. Moreover, unlike the first decision, nothing in the record suggested that the time spent waiting was not available for the employee's personal use. The facts and circumstances in the first decision were not comparable to the facts in this case, and the allowance of 3 hours of overtime in that case provided no authority for the payment of the overtime claimed. GAO concluded that the overtime claims should not be allowed.