Maryland’s highest court has ruled that the federal Portal-to-Portal Act has not been adopted or incorporated into Maryland’s Wage and Hour Law, Wage Payment and Collection Law, or the corresponding state regulations – meaning that employers may be responsible for more wages for their Maryland employees under state law than under federal law.
Federal law. The federal Portal-to-Portal Act is an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Portal-to-Portal Act excludes from working time the time spent traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the employee’s principal employment activity, as well as preliminary and postliminary activities to that principal activity. Therefore employers are not required to compensate employees for such time.
State law. As relevant to this case, Maryland law requires compensation for all hours of work. The state regulations implementing Maryland’s wage laws provide that “‘Hours of work’ means the time during a workweek that an individual employed by an employer is required by the employer to be on the employer’s premises, on duty, or at a prescribed workplace.” They also provide that travel time is hours worked if the individual “[t]ravels during regular work hours” or “[t]ravels from one worksite to another.” Until now, it has been unclear whether the state law incorporated the federal Portal-to-Portal Act and therefore whether the regulations should be applied in that context.
Background of the case. Amaya v. DGS...
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