Request By:
Mr. George S. Clark
Executive Director
Boone Regional Emergency
Medical Services Systems, Inc.
160 East Reynolds Road
Lexington, Kentucky 40503
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Martin Glazer, Assistant Attorney General
You seek the opinion of this office on the question of wage and hour law in regard to the employment of emergency medical technicians. You state that these employees are required to obtain 81 hours of training if they are Emergency Medical Technicians and 1500 hours if they are Paramedics. You want to know who pays for their salary, if any, while they are being trained and whether the employer can require the prospective employee to obtain this training prior to being employed.
Where the employer hires these individuals and then requires them to obtain the training, the time that they are required to be in training is considered to be employment time subject to the state minimum wage law. If this training is during a period of time which exceeds 40 hours of employment, then the employer would have to pay time and a half for each hour so trained. Department of Labor Regulation 803 KAR 1:065, Section 6 provides in part:
". . . . Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as working time if the following criteria are met:
(a) Attendance is outside of the employe's regular working hours;
(b) Attendance is in fact voluntary;
(c) The course, lecture, or meeting is not directly related to the employe's job; and
(d) The employe does not perform any productive work during such attendance.
(2) Involuntary attendance. Attendance is not voluntary if it is required by the employer. It is not voluntary if the employe is given to understand or led to believe that his present working conditions or the continuance of his employment would be adversely affected by nonattendance." (Emphasis supplied)
Inasmuch as the employee would be required to have this training in order to stay on the job in accordance with the Department for Human Resources requirements under the Certificate of Need and Licensure Regulations, the attendance would be considered involuntary, and therefore these employees would have to be paid their salary during that period.
There is nothing in the law to prevent the employer requiring a prospective employee to have the training before he is employed. Under such circumstances, the employer would not be responsible for any payment of salary before he actually employs a prospective employee.
However, this latter solution may not be practical if an employer cannot obtain sufficiently trained employees who are willing to obtain training on their own time and at their own cost.
If you have any further questions concerning this matter, we suggest that you contact the Division of Labor Standards, Department of Labor, U.S. 127 S, Frankfort, Kentucky 40601.