B-237693.2, Jul 27, 1990, Office of General Counsel

B-237693.2, Jul 27, 1990, Office of General Counsel

CIVILIAN PERSONNEL - Travel - Non-workday travel - Travel time - Overtime CIVILIAN PERSONNEL - Compensation - Overtime - Eligibility - Travel time DIGEST: An agency required an employee to perform permanent change-of station travel from Mississippi to the United Kingdom outside his regularly scheduled duty hours. In Robert H. Ray, Sr., B-237693, Mar. 30, 1990, we sustained the agency's denial of the employee's claim for overtime compensation, since his circumstances were not covered by any of the specific grounds authorizing such compensation in 5 U.S.C. Sec. 5542b(2)(B) and the agency's apparent failure to schedule his travel within his regular duty hours, in violation of 5 U.S.C. Sec. 6101(b)(2), provides no basis for a compensatory remedy. We provide a further explanation of that decision by letter in response to a congressional inquiry.

The Honorable Trent Lott

United States Senate

Dear Senator Lott:

We refer further to your letter of May 4, 1990, regarding correspondence you received from a constituent, Mr. Robert H. Ray, Sr., an Air Force employee, concerning his claim for overtime compensation. Among the papers Mr. Ray furnished was a copy of our decision, B-237693, March 30, 1990, which sustained the Air Force's denial of his claim. The following explanation for the holding in that decision may be helpful.

Mr. Ray claimed overtime compensation for travel he was required to perform outside his regular duty hours in connection with a permanent change of station from Mississippi to the United Kingdom. He was en route overnight and during part of Saturday.

The Air Force states that Mr. Ray's employment was exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 201 et seq. (1988). Therefore, his entitlement to overtime pay for traveltime was limited to the specific circumstances provided in 5 U.S.C. Sec. 5542(b)(2) (B) (1988). This statute provides that time spent in a travel status away from the official duty station of an employee is not hours of employment for overtime purposes unless the travel (i) involves the performance of work while traveling, (ii) is incident to travel that involves the performance of work while traveling, (iii) is carried our under arduous conditions, or (iv) results from an event which could not be scheduled or controlled administratively.

Mr. Ray does not contend that any of the four specifically described circumstances applied to him. His circumstances involved apparently routine travel; however, Mr. Ray indicates that since he was required to travel outside his regular duty hours, he should receive overtime compensation for the traveltime.

The general policy concerning scheduling employees' travel is provided in 5 U.S.C. Sec. 6101(b)(2), which exhorts agencies to schedule travel "to the maximum extent practicable" within an employee's regularly scheduled workweek. From the record in Mr. Ray's case it is not clear why his travel was scheduled as it was. However, even in cases where the travel policy set out in 5 U.S.C. Sec. 6101(b)(2) is not applied, unless one of the statutory exceptions in 5 U.S.C. Sec. 5542(b)(2)(B) is met, time spent in travel status away from an employee's official duty station cannot be considered hours of employment that are compensable. See e.g., Golden and Wood, 66 Comp.Gen. 620 (1987), and B-163654, Jan. 21, 1974. The United States Court of Claims reached the same conclusion in Barth and Levine v. United States, 215 Ct. Cl. 383 (1978).

Therefore, since Mr. Ray's travel did not fall within any of the statutory exceptions, there is no authority under which Mr. Ray could be compensated for his traveltime. We are enclosing copies of the cited decisions for your convenience, and we trust this will prove helpful to you in responding to Mr. Ray's inquiry.