Overtime in California--does my employer have to reimburse me travel time?

Question

Very often, approximately once or twice a week (it varies by week), I am required for my job to go to one of 5 cities in Southern California from the office in Diamond Bar. We are required to come to the office at 10:00 in the morning, then travel anywhere from 30 min to 2 hours and continue working until approximately 10 p.m. I know that the travel time from the office to the second location counts as time worked, but I am wondering about the time to come back from the other cities to go home--would that count as travel time that we could be reimbursed for? Would that fall under the "deduct your normal commute but the rest is overtime" rule?

Answer 1

You should have found this out before you took the job..

Answer 2

Yes, travel time is work time, but your commute is not counted as time worked.  So you either need to return to the office from your remote location for an accurate accounting or deduct the commute time to estimate the amount of travel time that is time worked.  With no traffic at 10 pm, your commute time home from the office should be easy to estimate.