Home Health & Hospice Week

If you’re trying to figure out when sleep counts — and when it doesn’t — for overtime purposes now that the companionship exemption is gone, a new Department of Labor resource may help.

The DOL on April 25 issued a Field Assistance Bulletin, “Exclusion of Sleep Time from Hours Worked by Domestic Service Employees,” outlining new home care examples for counting sleep hours in minimum wage and overtime calculations. The bulletin “describes the broadly applicable rules governing under what circumstances an employer may exclude sleep time from an employee’s hours worked under the [Fair Labor Standards Act] and, if exclusion is permissible, how many hours may be excluded, with explanations and examples from the domestic service context,” the document notes.

“It would be stretch to say that the guidance is 100 percent clear and answers all questions that home care employers have,” acknowledges the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.

Warning: “That lack of clarity and comprehensiveness … provide[s] a clear message to employers that caution is essential whenever attempting to rely on the sleep time exclusion to calculate compensable hours worked in home care,” NAHC says in its member newsletter. “Facts matter a lot on this issue. In addition, an employer’s plan on the hours worked and the sleep time excluded may not match reality and reality controls under the FLSA.”

PDF and Text links to the bulletin are at www.dol.gov/Whd/FieldBulletins/index.htm.