From Ohio
Question: Can a police department establish a work period for civilian dispatchers as 80 hours in a 14-day period rather than 40 hours in a 7-day period and not run afoul of the FLSA?
Answer: Civilian dispatchers must be treated on a seven-day workweek basis under the FLSA. The key will likely be when the FLSA workweek starts. If the employer is creative enough, having a workweek start during the middle of a schedule might result in two consecutive 40-hour FLSA workweeks that result in no overtime worked, though if the time were viewed on a calendar week basis, you might see more than 40 hours of work in any one calendar week.
From California
Question: Is the FLSA law regarding the paying of double time for hours worked in excess of 12 hours per day inclusive of law enforcement officers who work a standard five day/40-hour workweek?
Also, when overtime is accrued as comp time, and then later cashed out, is it to be paid as “regular pay” (i.e., including shift differential and all other remunerations, etc) assuming it was accrued with those remunerations?
For example, if I work a shift with a 5% differential, my overtime is paid at 1-1/2 times my base pay and 1-1/2 times the differential. But if I take the overtime as accrued Comp Time and later cash it out, is it supposed to be paid at the same rate as if I took it as overtime?
Answer: The FLSA has no double-time provisions. When overtime hours are worked over the FLSA threshold, they’re paid at the 1.5x rate. As to comp time, the FLSA requires that when an employer pays employees for comp time, it must do so at the “regular rate of pay” received at the time of payment. “Regular rate of pay” includes such premium pay as shift differential, longevity, education incentive, and specialty pay.
From Illinois
Question: Must the shift differential be included in the hourly rate of pay, even though a collective bargaining agreement only states the shift differential will be paid “only when the employee is actually working their regularly scheduled hours”?
The Employer is not including the differential in the hourly rate of pay, nor including the differential when an officer works overtime, training sessions for which he is paid at his overtime rate of pay, or court appearances when he is paid his overtime rate of pay.
How far back can an officer be paid if he was not paid the shift differential in any overtime pay or for time worked other than the actual hours for which the shift differential is for 6 p.m. - 6 a.m., but he worked a day shift as overtime, 6 a.m. - 6 p.m.?
Answer: Shift differential is treated as “remuneration for employment” under the FLSA, and thus must be included in the employee’s “regular rate of pay” for purposes of calculating the overtime rate. So, for example, if an employee receives shift differential on Monday, and later in the week works an FLSA overtime shift on Saturday, the rate of pay for Saturday’s work must take into account the amount of shift differential received on Monday, even if the overtime hours on Saturday, in and of themselves, would not qualify for shift differential.