Category: Overtime

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act covers hospitals and qualifying institutions primarily engaged in providing medical or nursing care to residents without the ordinary $500,000 revenue threshold, subject to the enterprise coverage requirements. For covered, nonexempt employees, federal overtime is generally due after 40 hours. Federal and Minnesota law also contain a 14-day, 8-and-80 alternative for qualifying health care settings, and it comes with specific conditions.

Time you spend working is hours worked whether or not it was recorded, and it has to be paid. The timekeeping system determines what the employer knows about your hours rather than which hours count.

No. Overtime is measured one workweek at a time, and an employer cannot offset a long week against a short one to bring the average below the threshold.

A nondiscretionary bonus is part of your pay for the week and raises the regular rate your overtime is calculated on. A bonus that is genuinely discretionary is excluded, and the two systems word the discretion test differently.

Divide the includable pay for your workweek by the total hours you worked to find your regular rate. Overtime hours have to be compensated at 1-1/2 times that rate, and where straight-time pay for those hours is already included in the week’s earnings, the additional premium still owed is one-half the regular rate. The threshold is 40 hours under federal law and 48 hours under Minnesota law.

Yes. Being paid a salary does not by itself remove your right to overtime. A salaried employee is entitled to overtime where the employee is covered by one of the overtime laws, is not exempt under the law that applies, and works more than the applicable overtime threshold.