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.
Exempt status is decided by what you actually do and how you are paid, and never by your job title alone. An employer that calls a position exempt has taken a position it has to be able to defend against the specific test it is relying on.
Both can apply to the same job at the same time. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act are separate statutes with separate coverage tests, and satisfying one does not answer the other.
Minnesota’s own overtime threshold is 48 hours in a workweek. The federal threshold is 40, and where both laws cover the same employee the employer has to satisfy both, which means overtime is owed after 40.
