Overtime Compensation and Per Diem for Travel Delays

A Bureau of Mines employee, whose position is covered by provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, had a temporary duty (TDY) assignment. Prior to the assignment, he received approval to take 8 hours of annual leave. After completion of 8 hours of work, he left his TDY station and boarded a flight on personal business. The annual leave was used for one workday, and the employee used another workday as a day of travel to return to his official duty station. The Finance Office of the Bureau of Mines believed that the claimant should be charged 8 hours of annual leave because he could have returned on the weekend. The claimant contended that the charge to his annual leave account was improper. Concomitant with the dispute over his annual leave was the question of whether overtime compensation or per diem was allowable. GAO held that (1) an agency's charge of 8 hours to employee's annual leave account was within its administrative discretion and reasonable under these circumstances; (2) no additional per diem was payable to the employee by reason of his failure to return to headquarters on the weekend, and per diem entitlement is limited to the amount otherwise payable if the return travel had been performed after completion of temporary duty without interruption and the agency's allowance of three quarters of a day's per diem was correct and reasonable; and (3) the 2-day per diem rule merely governs payment of per diem when an employee delays travel in order to travel during regularly scheduled working hours and entitlement to overtime compensation was determined by distinct and additional criteria contained in three statutes which were either not applicable or whose criteria were not met in the present case. Accordingly, the charge of 8 hours to the claimant's annual leave was proper.