Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 47 (“SB 47”) into law on April 6, codifying Ohio law to provide certain exceptions when employers are not required to pay employees overtime wages. The new law essentially aligns Ohio law with the federal Portal-to-Portal Act (PPA) amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The law becomes effective on July 6. Under the PPA and the new Ohio law, employers are not required to pay overtime wages to an employee for time spent:

• Walking, riding, or traveling to and from the actual place of performance of the principal activity or activities that the employee is employed to perform;
• Performing activities that are preliminary to or postliminary to the principal activity or activities;
• Performing activities requiring insubstantial or insignificant periods of time beyond the employee’s scheduled working hours.

The recent increase in the use of remote workers has blurred the line for Ohio employers as to whether brief activities such as listening to voicemails, reading emails, or checking schedules are compensable. Unfortunately, the new amendment does not define what is “insubstantial” or “insignificant.”

Ohio law is now consistent with federal law in holding that employers are not required to pay overtime for those activities when they occur before the time on any workday that the employee commences the principal activity, or after the time on any workday that the employee stops performing the principal activity.

The...

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