An employee who resides in the employer’s home permanently or for extended periods of time need not be paid for all of the time spent at the home. When a live-in employee engages in normal personal activities such as eating, sleeping, entertaining, and other periods of complete freedom from all duties, he or she does not have to be paid for that time. For a live-in domestic service employee, such as a live-in roommate, the employer and employee may agree to not pay for time spent during bona fide meal periods, sleep periods, and off-duty time. If the meal periods, sleep time, or other periods of free time are interrupted by a call to duty, the interruption must be counted as hours worked. In these circumstances, the Department will accept any reasonable agreement of the parties taking into consideration all of the pertinent facts. However, the employer must track and record all hours worked by domestic service employees, including live-in employees, and the employee must be paid for all hours actually worked notwithstanding the existence of an agreement. The employer may assign the employee the tasks of recording the hours worked and submitting that record to the employer.
Information about reasonable agreements in the context of shared living arrangements (such as adult foster care and paid roommate situations) is available in guidance documents that can be found at http://www.dol.gov/whd/homecare/shared_living.htm.
October 2018
Tags: Sleep Time Requirements
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