On a California public works project, travel time counts as paid work whenever the employer controls it, and it must be paid at the full prevailing wage rate for your classification. That covers reporting to a company yard before heading to the site, moving between job sites during the day, and reaching a temporary assignment that’s meaningfully farther than your normal commute. An ordinary drive from home to a fixed job site is not paid. California prevailing wage travel time also brings mileage and subsistence obligations on many projects, set trade by trade in the Department of Industrial Relations’ published determinations.1California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1773.1 – Per Diem Wages and Employer Payments
When Your Travel Has to Be Paid
The dividing line is employer control. Under the Industrial Welfare Commission’s wage orders, “hours worked” means time 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 the employer is telling you where to be, how to get there, or what to do along the way, that travel is part of your workday.
Reporting to a Yard or Meeting Point
When your employer requires you to show up at a shop, yard, or office before heading to the project, your paid time starts the moment you’re required to be there. In Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., the California Supreme Court held that employees required to meet at a designated location and ride employer-provided transportation are under the employer’s control for the whole trip.3Justia Law. Morillion v. Royal Packing Co. (2000) Merely offering a ride doesn’t make travel paid; requiring the ride does. The same logic applies when the employer tells you to stop at a yard to load tools or pick up the day’s instructions before driving to the site.
Travel During the Workday
Once the workday starts, every trip until it ends is paid time. Driving between two project locations, running to a supply house for materials, or moving equipment across a site all count, even if the driving itself isn’t physically demanding.2Department of Industrial Relations. California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement – Wages – Section: Travel Time
Assignments Far From Your Usual Site
If your employer sends you to a temporary job site significantly farther than your normal commute, the extra time above your usual travel 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 beyond your normal commute duration.2Department of Industrial Relations. California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement – Wages – Section: Travel Time This matters most when you usually report to a nearby project and suddenly get pulled to one an hour or two away.
What Isn’t Paid
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 generally not paid either. What tips travel into paid territory is direction or control by the employer beyond handing you an address.
What Rate Applies to Travel
Paid travel time on a public works project has to be at the full prevailing wage rate for your classification. Not minimum wage. Not a flat stipend. Labor Code Section 1773.1 defines “per diem wages” to include employer payments for travel and subsistence alongside 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 you the classification rate for on-site work and dropping to minimum wage for the drive between sites violates that rule.
One exception is worth knowing. Some prevailing wage determinations for specific trades include a reduced travel rate that’s lower than the full working rate. Certain laborer classifications, for example, call for travel pay at one-half of 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 folded that into its published determination. An employer cannot invent a discount on its own. If the determination for your trade and area doesn’t specify a travel rate, the default is full prevailing wage for every paid hour.
Travel Time and Overtime
Paid travel counts toward your total hours worked, which means it can push you into overtime. California’s prevailing wage framework requires overtime pay for hours beyond eight in a day and 40 in a week on public works.5California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1771 – Prevailing Wage Requirement An hour of morning travel from the shop plus an hour of return travel at the end of an eight-hour on-site shift stacks to ten hours, with the last two at overtime.
Mileage and Subsistence on Top of Travel Pay
Separate from hourly travel wages, most prevailing wage determinations require mileage and subsistence payments when a project is far from the worker’s home area. These are expense reimbursements, not wages, and they’re specified trade by trade in each DIR determination.1California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1773.1 – Per Diem Wages and Employer Payments They stack on top of your hourly travel pay, not in place of it. A worker who drives 90 miles to a distant project is owed the hourly travel pay for the paid drive time plus any mileage or per diem the determination requires.
Subsistence (Per Diem)
When a project is far enough that a worker needs to stay overnight, the applicable determination typically sets a daily subsistence payment for lodging and meals. The structure varies. One laborer determination requires subsistence for projects 60 or more miles from the employer’s main office, paying $70 per day when the worker arranges their own lodging or $30 per day for meals if the employer provides acceptable housing.4Department of Industrial Relations. Travel and Subsistence Provisions – Laborer Another trade’s determination sets the overnight threshold at 120 miles from the shop and ties meal reimbursement to the current IRS per diem rate for the project’s county.6Department of Industrial Relations. Travel and Subsistence Provisions Because the numbers move with classification and geography, the reliable answer for your project is the specific DIR determination that governs it.
Mileage Reimbursement
When you use a personal vehicle for required project travel, most determinations lay out a mileage zone schedule. A common structure uses tiered daily flat amounts based on distance from the employer’s shop, with a “free zone” for the first stretch and escalating payments beyond. One example 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. Past 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 calculating mileage using Google Maps.
If You Weren’t Paid for Travel Time
If you believe your employer isn’t paying the right prevailing wage for travel, you can file a complaint with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Start with the Worker Complaint Form on the DIR website. Fill in the project name, contractor, your classification, dates of unpaid travel, and any documents you have, like pay stubs or timecards.8Department of Industrial Relations. How to File a Public Works Complaint
Completed forms go to PW1@dir.ca.gov or by mail 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 Long Beach. All other counties go to Sacramento. You don’t need a lawyer, and retaliation against a worker who reports prevailing wage violations is itself a violation of California law.
What the Employer Faces
Beyond paying the difference between the prevailing rate and what you actually received, the Labor Commissioner can assess a penalty of up to $200 per calendar day for each underpaid worker. The minimum floor depends on the circumstances:
- Good-faith mistake, promptly corrected: the minimum may fall below $40 per day per worker.
- Standard violation: at least $40 per day per worker.
- Prior violations within three years: at least $80 per day per worker.
- Willful violation: at least $120 per day per worker.
Contractors who violate prevailing wage laws with intent to defraud face debarment from all public works projects for one to three years. The same applies to two or more willful violations within three years, or a failure to produce certified payroll records within 30 days of a written DLSE notice.9California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1777.1 – Debarment Combined back wages and penalties across weeks of travel and multiple workers tend to dwarf whatever the employer thought it was saving.10California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1775 – Penalties for Prevailing Wage Violations
One boundary to keep in mind: all of this applies to public works, meaning construction, demolition, installation, repair, and similar work funded in whole or in part with public money on contracts over $1,000.11California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 1720 – Public Works Definition On a purely private job, prevailing wage travel rules don’t apply, and travel pay is governed by ordinary California wage-and-hour law instead.