QUESTION: I am an hourly worker for a small company, where I've been employed for several years. Recently my company has required small groups of its full-time workers to travel out of town for temporary assignments.During these trips, our motel rooms and food are paid for, and we earn our regular hourly wage for the eight hours we work each day. But we receive no overtime or extra pay, despite the fact we are away from our homes the rest of the time.Since these trips are mandatory, shouldn't there be some type of compensation for the other 16 hours a day that we're away from our families?ANSWER: Whether the business trip is mandatory or not, employers are only legally required to pay hourly employees for time they actually spend working, said Christi Adams, a labor and employment lawyer with Foley & Lardner in Orlando.While you may be away from your family for those other 16 hours, the fact that you have no work responsibilities during that time is what counts, Adams said. The same principle applies for mandatory out-of-town training trips, she added. Hourly workers must be compensated for any required training time; they do not have to be compensated for their down time.Vacation deprivationThirty-seven percent of U.S. workers say they will not use all their earned vacation days this year, according to a survey last month of nearly 2,000 full-time employees.The same survey found that 24 percent of workers had taken no vacation days this year.Harry Wessel is a reporter for The Orlando Sentinel. He can be reached at 407-420-5506 or hwesselorlandosentinel.com.