U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
This Directive was canceled February 7, 2005.
Order | ||
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Subject | ||
Personnel Management Manual: Chapter 6: Pay, Allowances and Other Payments, Section 2: Overtime, Compensatory Time and Premium Pay | ||
Classification Code | Date | |
M3000.1B | June 28, 1996 |
Par.
(1) Overtime pay generally is paid to full-time, part-time and intermittent employees for work in excess of 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week which are officially ordered or approved. (However, certain employees who work on an approved alternative work schedule, or for whom the first 40 hours of duty in an administrative workweek is the basic workweek, may not be eligible for overtime if they work in excess of eight hours in a day.) Overtime work may be regularly scheduled overtime which is scheduled prior to the start of the regularly scheduled workweek, or irregularly scheduled overtime which is approved when needed. All other overtime is considered occasionally scheduled.
(2) Overtime should be kept to a minimum using prudent management practices and restricted to cases where paid overtime is the only feasible way of accomplishing the objective. Authorizing officials should develop a program for the approval and monitoring of overtime. Special attention should be given to employees who are working overtime hours at a rate that will cause them to exceed 300 hours of overtime in a given year. Consideration should also be given to the use of details from others parts of the organization and/or the use of compensatory time arrangements.
(3) Overtime should be requested and approved in advance. Unless it is scheduled prior to the start of the regularly scheduled workweek, overtime pay should not be paid unless the work is directed or consented to, approved and documented by an authorizing official. In case of operational emergencies precluding priorwritten authorization, overtime may be orally authorized provided it is subsequently confirmed in writing before submission of the time and attendance report authorizing the payment.
(4) Work schedules must correspond to the actual work requirements. Assignments to tours of duty, including overtime, should be outlined in specific days and hours, and made in advance of the administrative workweek. When is it known prior to the onset of the workweek that a change in a work schedule is necessary, the employee must be informed as soon as possible and the tour of duty change must be adequately documented on the employee's time and attendance card.
(5) Absence on annual or sick leave, absence on legal holidays, non-workdays established by executive or administrative order, or absence on compensatory time during the basic workweek does not reduce the amount of overtime pay to which an employee may be entitled during an administrative workweek.
(6) The performance of irregular or occasional overtime work at night that was not scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek does not entitle the employee to night pay in addition to overtime pay for the same hours.
(1) Crediting Fractional Hours of Work
(a) An employee shall be compensated for every minute of overtime work.
(b) Preshift (preparatory) or postshift (concluding) activities not closely related to the performance of the principal activities are not computed in "hours of work", unless it is determined that a preshift or postshift activity isindispensable to the performance of the principal activities. In this case, the time spent in the qualifying preshift or postshift activity must exceed 10 minutes per daily tour of duty to receive credit for the total time spent in the activity as hours of work.
(2) Overtime Rates of Pay. The overtime rate of pay for employees is determined as follows:
(a) Under Title 5, U.S.C., all employees (regardless of pay plan) whose basic rate is greater than the minimum rate for grade GS-10, the overtime hourly rate is one and one half times the hourly rate of basic pay at the minimum rate for grade GS-10.
(b) Under FLSA, overtime pay for nonexempt employees whose basic pay does not exceed the minimum rate for grade GS-10, the overtime rate is one and one-half times his/her basic rate.
(c) In instances where the FLSA and other non-Title 5 statutes are not consistent in regard to overtime provisions, calculations under both laws will be made and employees will receive overtime pay under whichever authority provides the greater benefit within a given workweek.
(d) Under the FLSA, employees are entitled to overtime on the basis of actual hours worked, including work within the workweek which may not be ordered or approved but is "suffered or permitted" to be performed; a workday begins with the commencement of the employee's principal activities and ends with the conclusion of the employee's principal activities for that day.
(e) Supervisors are responsible for assuring that nonexempt employees do not perform workduring nonwork periods unless overtime payment is intended.
(f) Under the provisions of the FLSA, overtime is payable for all hours of work performed in excess of 8 hours daily (or in excess of the specified hours of the day for employees on compressed work schedules). Overtime work "suffered or permitted" will be payable in excess of 40 hours in a workweek. Employees engaged in professional or technical engineering activities must follow a 40 hours of duty standard as a basis for overtime.
(g) The nature of the overtime (e.g., "regularly scheduled" or irregular or occasional) must be documented. When computing entitlement for overtime, paid leave and other non-work hours in pay status are treated as hours worked in making the calculation, but hours covered by other types of premium pay, except night pay, are not.
(h) The FLSA considers meal periods as hours worked if the meal periods are frequently interrupted by calls to duty, the employee would not be considered relieved of all duties and meal periods must be considered as "hours worked." However, if an employee's meal periods are uninterrupted, except for rare and infrequent calls, the meal periods can be excluded from "hours worked."
(1) The FLSA requires the payment of compensation to covered employees under certain conditions for authorized travel time spent traveling on non-workdays or outside official duty hours. Such entitlement exists whenever the agency directs or permits (that is, gives the employee the choice of when to travel or knows of the employee's travel arrangements on non-workdays and does not alter them) an employee to travel on other than regularly scheduled workdays and duty hours.
(2) Each request for overtime while in a travel status should be considered on a case by case basis for payment of overtime. The 5 CFR,Part 551.422 or subsequently issued interpretations and guidance should be consulted prior to final determination on overtime eligibility.
(3) Compensable hours of work under FLSA. An employee covered by FLSA in the circumstance described below would be entitled to have these hours counted as hours of work and receive overtime pay for any hours that exceed 40 in a single workweek:
(a) any time and for any reason an employee drives a government vehicle or his or her personally owned vehicle during a regularly scheduled workday or on a non-workday to a temporary duty location outside the official duty station limits (i.e., if the employee were directed or permitted to drive from home to motel at a temporary duty location on Sunday to begin work on Monday), the entire time spent driving would be countable as hours of work;
(b) any time an employee is a passenger in a vehicle driven by another employee or travels on a commercial carrier, then the time spent riding and waiting for rides which correspond to the employee's regular work hours would be counted as hours of work (i.e., if the trip were on a Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. and the employee's regular hours were 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, the employee would have 5 hours, noon to 5 p.m., counted as hours of work);
(c) any time an employee is directed to fly to a temporary duty site on Sunday, but chooses to drive, he or she would be entitled to count as work hours only the lesser of the actual time traveled, either the flying time or the driving time;
(d) any time an employee performs work while driving, even if commuting (i.e., by being required to pick up passengers or make business stops), and;
(e) whenever an employee attends an event which could not be scheduled or controlled administratively, travel time to the event and the return from such event to his or her official duty station would be counted as hours of work.
(a) the time spent is within the days and hours of the regularly scheduled administrative workweek of the employee, including regularly scheduled overtime hours; or
(b) the travel involves the performance of work while traveling; is incidental to travel that involves the performance of work while traveling: is carried out under arduous conditions; or results from an event which could not be scheduled or controlled administratively.
(1) Employees whose rate of basic pay exceeds the maximum rate for GS-10 may be required to take compensatory time off in lieu of overtime for irregular or occasional overtime work.
(2) There is no authority to grant compensatory time off for regularly scheduled overtime; employees must be paid for such overtime.
(1) Nonexempt employees, with rates of pay up to and including the maximum rate for GS-10, may request compensatory time in lieu of overtime pay only for irregular or occasional overtime work.
(2) Compensatory time may be granted, only if it is selected by the employee in advance by signing a statement to be submitted with the time and attendance card.
(1) An employee may elect to accrue compensatory time for the purpose of taking time off without charge to leave when personal religious beliefs require that the employee abstain from work during certain periods of the workday or workweek.
(2) Any employee who elects to accrue compensatory time for this purpose shall be granted (in lieu of overtime pay) an equal amount of compensatory time off (hour for hour) from his or her scheduled tour of duty. (There are recordkeeping requirements for such compensatory time for religious observances as specified in Title 5 CFR 550.1001.)
(1) The law authorizes a night differential of 10 percent of the employee's basic pay in addition to his/her basic pay, to be paid for any regularly scheduled work between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
(2) Any night work, including overtime during night hours, that has been scheduled in advance of the administrative workweek (regularly scheduled work) is compensable at night rates.
(3) The only exception to the requirement that night work be regularly scheduled is when night pay is authorized because the employee, as a result of the temporary change in the daily tour of duty, actually performs night work as part of his/her regularly scheduled administrative workweek. For example, an employee whose daily tour of duty is 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday reports to work on Monday and is informed that his/her work schedule for Tuesday through Friday will be from 3:30 p.m. until midnight. The employee only works 40 hours during the week and is not entitled to overtime pay, but is entitled to night differential for 24 hours.
(4) Under Title 5, U.S.C. night pay differential is in addition to overtime, Sunday, or holiday pay and is not included in the rate of basic pay used to compute the overtime, Sunday, or holiday pay.
(5) Payment of night differential continues for regularly scheduled night hours when an employee is in a paid leave status providing the total amount of leave in a pay period is less than 8 hours; or is absent due to a holiday or other non-workday or is in an official travel status.
(1) If an employee performs work on Sunday as part of his or her regularly scheduled workweek, he or she is entitled to Sunday pay for the Sunday hours worked; if hours are in excess of a basic 40-hour workweek, he or she is entitled to overtime pay for such work.
(2) Sunday pay entitlement includes basic pay plus premium pay at a rate equal to 25 percent of the rate of basic pay for each hour of regularly scheduled Sunday work.
(1) An employee who performs work on a Federal holiday as part of his/her regularly scheduled workweek is entitled to premium pay at a rate equal to the regular rate of basic pay in addition to regular pay for the holiday. In no case will an employee required to perform any work be entitled to less than 2 hours of holiday pay.
(2) An employee who is assigned overtime work on a Federal holiday is paid in the same manner as for overtime work performed on other days.
(3) Under Title 5, U.S.C. premium pay for holiday work is in addition to overtime pay or night pay differential or premium pay for Sunday work, and is not included in the rate of basic pay used to compute the overtime pay, night pay differential or premium pay for Sunday work.