Claim for Overtime Compensation for Travel Time

A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Electronic Technician appealed the disallowance of his claim for overtime compensation for daily travel for 14 days between regular and temporary duty stations. The FAA employee contended that this temporary duty assignment, requiring him to report for work at a station different from his regular duty station, could not properly be ordered because an FAA regulation required that an employee be given 60 days advance notice of a reassignment which involved relocation. Further, the employee stated that the "order" was abandoned when management finally became convinced of the error. Therefore, the employee argued that he was in effect ordered to report to his regular duty station a half-hour before the beginning of his regular tour of duty, travel to his temporary duty station, work 8 hours there with time out for lunch, and then travel back to his regular duty station, arriving there a half-hour after his regular tour of duty ended. This, he maintained placed his travel within the purview of another FAA regulation which provides that when electronic technicians report to the sector office to check in, receive assignment, pick up vehicles, tool, and supplies, and then travel to one or more facilities for maintenance work and return to the section office, such travel is an inherent part of and inseparable from the work, and time spent in such travel is compensable at regular or overtime rates. However, GAO held that the order directing the employee to report to his temporary duty assignment was not a reassignment involving relocation. A reassignment, involving relocation as comtemplated by the FAA regulation, is one in which there is a permanent change of station and the employee is required to relocate his residence or place from which he regularly commutes to work. Thus, the employee's situation did not fall within this definition. Moreover, the employee's travel time was not compensable as no overtime was officially ordered or approved for him. Therefore, his travel was not performed within his regular tour of duty or regularly scheduled overtime. Accordingly, the disallowance of the employee's claim was sustained.