{"id":222,"date":"2008-11-17T10:16:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T14:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/?p=222"},"modified":"2008-11-17T10:16:39","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T14:16:39","slug":"us-department-of-labor-issues-opinion-letter-on-overtime-on-call-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/2008\/11\/us-department-of-labor-issues-opinion-letter-on-overtime-on-call-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"US Department of Labor Issues Opinion Letter on Overtime, On-call Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Department of Labor recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2008-6<\/a>. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This Opinion Letter discusses whether a city that employs workers in a Water Treatment Plant may include on-call compensation received in a two-week pay period with other pay received in a two-week pay period for purposes of computing the overtime rate of pay to be applied to that period. An employee is paid $2.50 per hour for on-call time that is not considered hours worked under the FLSA. The employee may work overtime during only one week of two-week period. The city proposed including the on-call compensation with all other compensation received in the two-week pay period and dividing by the number of hours worked in that pay period to arrive at a regular rate of pay. For example, an employee earns $10 per hour, works forty hours in the first week and forty-five hours in the second week of a two-week pay period and also receives $100 of on-call compensation. The city proposed paying overtime based on a regular rate of $11.18 per hour. (40 hours X $10\/hour) + (45 hours X $10\/hour) + $100 = $950 total compensation. $950\/85 hours = $11.18 per hour regular rate of pay for overtime purposes. The overtime premium under this method would be $27.95 or $11.18\/hour X 5 hours X0.5 premium. If a one-week pay period were used, a regular rate of $12.22 would be used for the overtime calculation (45 hours X $10\/hour) + $100 = $550 total compensation and $550\/45 hours = $12.22 per hour. The overtime premium under this method would be $30.55 or $12.22\/hour X 5 hours X0.5 premium. The FLSA uses a standard of a single workweek for calculating the regular rate of pay and does not allow averaging over two weeks even if the employee\u2019s pay period is normally two weeks. Since \u201cthe<\/span> specific hours for which on-call pay was earned are identifiable, the payment for on-call time must be attributed to the workweek in which the on-call hours occurred.\u201d Therefore, the city must use the latter method to calculate the employee\u2019s regular rate of pay and may not use a two-week period. State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact Vision Payroll<\/a> if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Department of Labor recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2008-6. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This Opinion Letter discusses whether a city that employs workers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[154,82,47,541,156,151,45,89,542],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}