On a California public works project, prevailing wage travel time must be paid whenever the travel is under your employer’s control: reporting to a company yard before heading to the site, moving between job sites during the day, or being sent to a worksite well beyond your usual commute. An ordinary drive from home to a fixed job site is not paid. California Labor Code Section 1773.1 folds travel and subsistence into the definition of per diem wages, which means those obligations ride along with every covered project contract.1California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1773.1 – Per Diem Wages and Employer Payments
When Travel Time Is Paid and When It Isn’t
The dividing line is employer control. Under California’s Industrial Welfare Commission orders, “hours worked” means time during which you are subject to the control of the employer, including all time you are permitted to work whether or not it’s required.2Department of Industrial Relations. California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement – Wages – Section: Travel Time If your employer tells you when to be somewhere, how to get there, or what to do on the way, the trip is part of your workday.
Reporting to a Yard or Meeting Point
When you’re required to show up at a company yard, shop, or office before heading to the project site, your compensable time starts the moment you’re required to be at that meeting point. The California Supreme Court set this out in Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., holding that employees who must meet at a designated location and ride employer-provided transportation are under the employer’s control for the entire trip.3Justia Law. Morillion v. Royal Packing Co. (2000) Simply offering a ride doesn’t make travel compensable. Requiring workers to use it does. The same logic covers a required stop at the yard to load tools or receive the day’s instructions before driving to the site.
Travel Between Sites During the Day
Once your workday has started, travel stays compensable until the day ends. Driving between two public works sites during a single shift, running to a supply house for project materials, or moving equipment from one part of the project to another is paid time, even if the driving itself isn’t physically demanding.2Department of Industrial Relations. California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement – Wages – Section: Travel Time
Temporary or Distant Worksites
If you’re assigned to a temporary site significantly farther than your normal commute, the extra time beyond your usual drive is compensable. The DLSE treats this as a temporary work location change: the employer owes you for the additional time required to reach the new site above what your regular commute takes.2Department of Industrial Relations. California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement – Wages – Section: Travel Time This matters most when you normally report to a nearby project and suddenly get sent one or two hours away.
Commutes That Stay Unpaid
A standard commute from home to a fixed job site within reasonable proximity of your regular assignment is not paid time. If you have no regular site and simply drive to wherever the current project is, that daily drive is also generally not compensable. What matters is whether the employer directed or controlled the travel beyond giving you an address.
How Much You’re Owed
Compensable travel time on a public works project is paid at the full prevailing wage rate for your classification, not minimum wage and not some reduced flat rate the employer picks. Section 1773.1 defines per diem wages to include employer payments for travel and subsistence along with the basic hourly rate, health and welfare contributions, pension, and vacation.1California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1773.1 – Per Diem Wages and Employer Payments Paying your classification rate for on-site work and then switching to minimum wage for the drive between sites violates this requirement.
One exception is worth knowing. Some prevailing wage determinations include a reduced travel rate lower than the full work rate. Certain laborer classifications, for example, call for travel pay at half the straight-time hourly wage for drive time beyond a set distance from the employer’s shop.4Department of Industrial Relations. Travel and Subsistence Provisions – Laborer These reduced rates exist only because a collective bargaining agreement established them and the DIR then incorporated the terms into its published determination. An employer cannot invent its own discounted travel rate. If the determination for your trade and area doesn’t specify a travel rate, the default is full prevailing wage for every compensable hour.
Travel Time Pushes You Into Overtime
Compensable travel counts toward total hours worked, so it can tip you into overtime. The prevailing wage framework requires overtime for hours beyond eight in a day and 40 in a week on public works projects.5California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1771 – Prevailing Wage Requirement An hour from shop to site in the morning and an hour back at the end of the day stack on top of eight hours of on-site work. Employers who ignore travel in their overtime math end up with back-wage liability.
Subsistence and Mileage Come On Top
Separate from hourly travel pay, prevailing wage determinations often require subsistence and mileage payments when a project sits far from your home area. These are expense reimbursements, not hourly wages, and they are set trade by trade in each DIR determination.1California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1773.1 – Per Diem Wages and Employer Payments
Per Diem for Overnight Projects
When a project is far enough that you need to stay overnight, the applicable determination usually requires a daily subsistence payment to cover lodging and meals. The structure varies by trade. One laborer classification requires subsistence for projects 60 or more miles from the employer’s main office, paying $70 per day when the worker arranges lodging or $30 per day for meals if the employer provides acceptable housing.4Department of Industrial Relations. Travel and Subsistence Provisions – Laborer Another determination sets the overnight threshold at 120 miles from the shop and pegs meal reimbursement to the current IRS per diem for the county where the project sits.6Department of Industrial Relations. Travel and Subsistence Provisions Because these numbers differ by classification and geography, the only reliable way to know your figures is to pull the specific DIR determination for your project.
Mileage for Personal Vehicles
When you use your own vehicle for required project travel, the determination typically sets up a tiered mileage schedule. A common structure uses a “free zone” for the first 30 miles from the shop with escalating daily flat amounts beyond that. One sample determination pays nothing for the first 30 miles, $15 per day for 31–40 miles, $35 per day for 41–60 miles, and $60 per day for 61–120 miles. Beyond 120 miles, the rate switches to the IRS standard mileage rate with no free zone.6Department of Industrial Relations. Travel and Subsistence Provisions The IRS standard business mileage rate for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile.7Internal Revenue Service. IRS Sets 2026 Business Standard Mileage Rate at 72.5 Cents Per Mile, Up 2.5 Cents Distance is generally measured by the shortest public highway route, and many determinations now specify Google Maps as the measuring tool.
Subsistence and mileage are not substitutes for travel wages. A worker who drives 90 miles to a distant project is owed hourly travel pay for the compensable drive time and the applicable mileage or per diem on top of that.
If You Aren’t Being Paid Correctly
If you believe your employer isn’t paying the correct prevailing wage for travel time, you can file a complaint directly with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. The process starts with the Worker Complaint Form on the DIR website. Include the project name, the contractor, your classification, the dates of unpaid travel, and any pay stubs or timecards you have.8Department of Industrial Relations. How to File a Public Works Complaint
Completed forms can be emailed to PW1@dir.ca.gov or mailed to the DLSE office that covers your project’s county. Projects in Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, or Ventura counties go to the Long Beach office. All other counties go to Sacramento. You don’t need a lawyer to file, and retaliation against workers who report prevailing wage violations is itself a violation of California law.
What the Employer Faces
The Labor Commissioner can assess a penalty of up to $200 per calendar day for each worker paid less than the prevailing rate. The minimum penalty depends on the circumstances:
- A good-faith mistake, promptly corrected, may be set below $40 per day per worker.
- A standard violation carries at least $40 per day per worker.
- If the contractor has prior violations within three years, the floor rises to at least $80 per day per worker.
- A willful violation carries at least $120 per day per worker.
On top of the penalty, the contractor must pay each affected worker the difference between the prevailing rate and whatever they actually received.9California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1775 – Penalties for Prevailing Wage Violations When travel underpayments stretch across weeks or months and multiple workers, back wages and penalties together can easily exceed whatever the contractor thought it was saving.