Overtime pay and vacation

Q. I’m a Non-Exempt employee. I had a vacation on Friday and worked thru my lunch a couple of days after I got back. Because of me having a vacation day do I still qualify for overtime pay? I get paid bi-weekly.

A.  I applaud your use of the term non-exempt.  It is not hourly or salary that makes a difference.  This term comes from the fact that you are not exempt from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  We’ll talk about that in another blog entry.  As for your question, an understanding of overtime requirements is important.  First, I will only discuss things from a federal perspective.  Your state may have slightly different rules.  According to the Department of Labor’s website, “Employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek of at least one and one-half times their regular rates of pay.”

The key here is “hours worked.”  Unless you actually worked more than 40 hours, your company is not obligated to pay you 1.5 times your regular rate of pay.  Let’s go through a quick example.

Facts:
-company workweek is Sunday through Saturday
-employee normally works Tuesday through Saturday 8 to 5 with 1 hour for lunch
-employee takes vacation day on Friday
-total hours worked for the week due to working through lunch is 34

The temptation for most employees is to add 34 plus 8 hours for vacation and proclaim “I am due overtime for 2 hours.”  This would be incorrect.  Your employer may choose to be generous and treat its employees like that, but it’s not very common.  Instead you will be given 42 hours of regular time including 8 charged to vacation.

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