Washington's Employee-Friendly Travel Time Rules Trigger Big Settlement

Author: Michael Cardman, Brightmine Senior Legal Editor

May 30, 2024

The Boeing Company has agreed to pay $11.5 million to 495 employees whom it had not properly compensated for out-of-town travel, following an investigation by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I).

The enforcement agency said it was the largest amount of back pay returned to workers in its history.

In a compliance agreement announced today by L&I, Boeing agreed not only to pay back wages but also to take steps to prevent future violations, such as developing a process to investigate and provide payment when employees can show they are owed additional wages.

"Work travel is still work - and we want to ensure Washington businesses understand what they owe to their workers who are on the road," L&I Director Joel Sacks said.

"As Washington has clarified the state's travel pay policies in the past several years, we also aligned our pay practices to reflect those requirements," Boeing said in an email to Brightmine. "We also went a step further and provided back pay for eligible employees in 2021 and more recently provided back pay earlier this year for another group of employees that did not originally record all of their travel time. We are pleased the state has agreed to close an audit into Boeing pay practices."

Washington's wage and hour laws are much more strict about out-of-town travel than the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Under Washington state law, all travel time related to work is compensable regardless of the number of hours or when the travel takes place. It also includes any time necessary to get to an airport, train station or other transit center necessary to complete the out-of-town travel. Employees not only must be paid their wages for this time, but also must be paid  overtime for any hours beyond 40 in a workweek and accrue paid sick leave.

Under the FLSA, on the other hand, the time an employee spends traveling on an overnight trip away from his or her home community counts as hours worked only when it cuts across the employee's workday. For example, if an employee regularly works only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday, only time spent traveling between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday counts as hours worked.