Glossary

The alternative overtime-computation period section 7(j) allows hospitals and residential-care establishments to adopt in place of the workweek. Once in place, overtime is owed for hours beyond 8 in a single workday within the period and again for hours beyond 80 across the full 14 days, with daily-overtime premiums already paid creditable toward the 80-hour threshold.

A demonstrated pattern of improper deductions — weighed by how many occurred relative to actual infractions, how long it continued, and how many employees, locations, and managers were involved — that shows the employer did not intend to pay on a salary basis, costing the exemption for the affected job classification and time period.

The white-collar exemption whose duties test requires two things to be true at once: the employee's primary duty must be office or non-manual work directly related to the management or general business operations of the employer or the employer's customers, and that same primary duty must include the exercise of discretion and independent judgment on matters of significance. Office work alone, however important it feels, does not satisfy it.

The judge the Chief Administrative Law Judge appoints, after a timely exception is referred by Order of Reference, to hear the case and notify the parties of a prehearing conference and hearing. The judge may rule only on whether the employer committed a violation of section 12, section 3(m)(2)(B), or a repeated or willful violation of section 6 or section 7, and whether the Administrator’s penalty was appropriate — issuing findings and conclusions with an order affirming, denying, reversing, or modifying the determination.

The Department body to which either party may petition for review of an Administrative Law Judge’s decision, with the petition actually received within 30 days of that decision. A timely petition keeps the judge’s decision inoperative until the Board dismisses the appeal or issues a decision affirming it; without one, the judge’s decision becomes the Secretary of Labor’s final order.

The section 7(g) alternative available to a pieceworker, an employee performing two or more kinds of work at different established hourly rates, or an employee paid a combination of hourly and piece rates: by advance agreement, overtime hours are paid at one and one-half times whichever bona fide rate applies to the work actually performed during those hours, rather than a single blended rate for the whole workweek.

An hourly figure set on paper below what a job actually pays, used as the base for computing straight-time and overtime pay while the rest of the promised weekly sum is made up separately and called a “bonus.” Because the top-up exists only to bridge the gap between this low rate and the guaranteed total, the low rate isn't the employee's real regular rate.

A regular rate produced by structuring pay so the figure on the pay stub reads lower than total pay actually divided by hours actually worked. Paying overtime on an artificial regular rate doesn't satisfy the Act's overtime provisions — the employer remains liable for the shortfall the correctly computed rate would have produced.

Clock hours a collective bargaining agreement or other applicable employment contract establishes in good faith as the standard workday, not exceeding 8 hours — or workweek, not exceeding the 40-hour maximum under section 7(a). A premium of at least one and one-half times the established rate, paid for work outside that pattern, qualifies for exclusion and credit under section 7(e)(7); a premium confined to particular hours within the pattern does not.

For a shortened EAP or outside-sales record, the description — such as a dollar figure per week or month, with an addendum like “plus hospitalization and insurance plan A” — detailed enough to permit calculating the employee’s total remuneration for each pay period, including fringe benefits and prerequisites.

Manual laborers and other 'blue collar' workers — such as carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, iron workers, operating engineers, longshoremen, and construction laborers — who perform repetitive work with their hands, physical skill, and energy, gaining their skills through apprenticeship and on-the-job training rather than a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction, and who are excluded from exemption under Part 541 no matter how highly paid they are.

A genuine — not sham — plan providing benefits such as old age, retirement, life, accident, or health insurance. Employer contributions to such a plan are excluded from the regular rate under section 7(e)(4) only when all five conditions this chapter sets out are met: adoption and communication to employees, a primary purpose of systematically providing the listed benefits, a definite formula, irrevocable funding, and no employee option to assign the benefit or take cash instead.

A break during which the employee is completely relieved from duty for the purpose of eating a regular meal — ordinarily 30 minutes or more, though a shorter period can qualify under special conditions the regulation does not specify. An employee required to keep working through the break, such as staying at a desk or a machine, is not on a bona fide meal period, whether the duties performed are active or merely inactive, and the time is paid.

A rate actually paid for the work when performed during nonovertime hours, and high enough to yield at least the minimum wage — not a rate set artificially low to evade the overtime requirements. The applicable rate method requires the rate used for overtime hours to be bona fide in this sense.

A guaranteed minimum number of hours' pay for an employee who, after scheduled hours have ended and without prearrangement, responds to a call to come back and perform extra work. Only the amount above what the hours actually worked would have paid is excludable, and only while the extra work was not anticipated and reasonably could have been scheduled — a recurring, anticipated call-in is prearranged and must be folded into the regular rate.

A final payment an employer may make, during the last pay period of the 52-week period or within one month after it ends, to close a shortfall between an employee's actual earnings and the highly compensated employee compensation threshold — counting toward the year it closes out, not the year it is paid.

A monetary penalty, separate from back pay, that the Administrator may assess against a person for a violation of section 3(m)(2)(B) of the Act, or for a repeated or willful violation of section 6 or section 7 — the two categories carrying different per-violation caps, adjusted annually for inflation under § 578.1. Within the applicable cap, the Administrator sets the amount by weighing the seriousness of the violation, the size of the employer’s business, and other factors such as good-faith efforts to comply and the employer’s history of violations.

One of the five conditions the fluctuating workweek method requires: the employer and employee understand that the fixed salary compensates all hours worked in the week, with overtime premiums, bonuses, commissions, hazard pay, and other additional pay added on top of the salary rather than covered by it. This understanding does not have to extend to the specific method used to calculate overtime pay.

The standard covering an employee who is not personally producing or working on goods: the employee's work must be both closely related to, and directly essential for, producing goods for interstate commerce — not one or the other alone. An employee at the place where the goods are produced is covered unless the employer shows the job's functions are so definitely segregated from that production that they should not be regarded as closely related and directly essential to it; failing either element is enough to defeat that showing.

Pay figured as a percentage of sales, of sales above a specified amount, or on some other formula. A commission is treated as payment for hours worked and generally must be folded into the regular rate — whether it is the employee's only compensation or is paid on top of a guaranteed salary or hourly rate, and however it is computed, allocated, or paid.

The test that makes waiting time off duty rather than on duty: the employee must be completely relieved from duty for a period long enough to use effectively for personal purposes, and must be definitely told in advance that they may leave the job and will not have to report back until a specific, named hour. Whether a given period is long enough is a question of fact, but the advance, definite release from duty is the piece that cannot be skipped.

The exemption for employees in computer occupations, available under section 13(a)(1) on a salary or fee basis or under section 13(a)(17) on an hourly basis, but only when the employee's primary duty is systems analysis, systems or program design, operating system programs, or a combination of those duties requiring the same skill level each would demand performed alone. Job title never determines whether it applies.

Work expressly excluded from the computer employee exemption even though it is inseparable from computers — hardware manufacture or repair does not qualify, and neither does work merely dependent on or made easier by computers and software, such as computer-aided design by engineers or drafters.

The professional exemption route for work requiring invention, imagination, originality, or talent in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor — music, writing, acting, and the graphic arts are the fields named — rather than work that depends primarily on intelligence, diligence, and accuracy. It reaches employees like actors, composers, and novelists who supply their own creative expression, but not copyists, cartoon “animators,” or photograph retouchers, whose output the regulation does not consider creative in character.

The location element of the outside sales test: the sale itself must occur at the customer's place of business or, for door-to-door selling, at the customer's home. Selling by mail, telephone, or the Internet does not satisfy it unless that contact is merely an adjunct to the employee's in-person calls.

A real, permanent unit with a continuing function that an employee can be found to manage — not, in the regulation's words, “a mere collection of employees assigned from time to time to a specific job or series of jobs.” An employer with several locations can generally treat the person in charge of each location as managing such a subdivision, and a unit does not lose that status merely because the employee occasionally draws workers from a pool or from other units.

A flat sum paid per day or per job, without regard to hours worked. When it is the employee's only pay, the day-rate or job-rate sums for the workweek are totaled and divided by hours actually worked to find the regular rate; if the employee also receives other compensation, such as waiting time pay or a bonus, all compensation is totaled and divided by hours worked instead — the same method used for pieceworkers.

A commission that cannot be calculated and paid by the employee's regular payday for the workweek in which it was earned. Until the amount is known, the employer may pay overtime at one and one-half times the hourly rate alone, exclusive of the commission; once the commission is computed, it must be apportioned back over the workweeks of the period in which it was earned, with additional overtime paid for each workweek in that period where the employee worked overtime.

The third of the five section 7(e)(4) conditions: the plan must fix the benefit or the employer's contribution by one of three alternatives — actuarially determinable benefits, a definite formula for both the contribution and each employee's benefit, or a contribution formula paired with a consistent benefit-determination method. A formula with an insignificant minimum and an open-ended maximum fails this test.

A description of the type of work the administrative exemption requires, not the title attached to it — work that assists with running or servicing the business, as distinguished from working a production line or selling a product in a retail or service establishment. The regulation names functional areas such as tax, finance, accounting, budgeting, quality control, purchasing, human resources, and legal and regulatory compliance, and the same test can be met performing those functions for the employer's customers rather than the employer itself.

Comparing and evaluating real courses of conduct and then deciding, or recommending, on a matter that carries real weight for the business — not simply applying skill to well-established techniques, procedures, or manuals, and not clerical, tabulating, or mechanical work. The judgment need not be final: a decision that is later reviewed or revised by someone higher up still counts, as long as the employee was choosing among genuine alternatives rather than following a set procedure.

A bonus excluded from the regular rate only where both the fact that it will be paid and its amount remain in the employer's sole discretion at or near the end of the period the bonus covers, with no prior contract, agreement, or promise that would lead the employee to expect it regularly. A bonus announced in advance as to timing — even if the amount is left open — has already lost this exclusion, and what the bonus is called does not settle the question.

An event the employer could not reasonably anticipate and could not reasonably staff around in the normal course of business. An exempt employee who performs otherwise nonexempt work during a genuine emergency does not lose the exemption, but a predictable heavy workload or seasonal rush does not qualify as one.

Under § 785.36, when an employee who has already gone home for the day is called out at night to travel a substantial distance — well beyond the employee’s normal commute — to perform an emergency job for one of the employer’s customers, all of the travel time is working time, not merely the time spent once the employee arrives and starts the repair. The Wage and Hour Division takes no position on whether the same treatment applies to an employee called back to the employer’s own regular place of business rather than out to a customer’s site.

Any fixed site a salesperson uses as headquarters or for telephonic solicitation — home or office, whether or not the employer formally owns or rents it — counts as one of the employer's places of business. Hotel sample rooms used while traveling, and trade shows of short duration where selling actually happens, are not counted as the employer's place of business.

Work involving or related to the movement of persons or things, including information and intelligence, among the states or between a state and a place outside it. It reaches employees working in the channels of commerce itself and employees whose work is so closely related to that commerce, as a practical matter, that they should be considered a part of it; merely affecting commerce is not enough.

The Supreme Court’s contrast for classifying waiting time. An employee who is “engaged to wait” is working: the wait is unpredictable, usually short, and controlled by the employer, so it cannot be used effectively for personal purposes — true even away from the employer’s premises, as with a repair worker waiting for a customer to get the site ready. An employee who instead “waited to be engaged” is not working. Which one applies to a given stretch of idle time is, per the courts, a matter of common sense and the general concept of work or employment, not a formula.

A fixed rate adopted under section 7(g)(3), authorized by regulation as substantially equivalent to the employee's average hourly earnings — exclusive of overtime premiums — over a representative period, and used in place of a regular rate recalculated fresh each workweek. Overtime hours are paid at not less than one and one-half times this rate.

The written objection an employer must send to the official who issued the notice of determination, at the address shown on the notice, received no later than fifteen days after the employer receives that notice. It must be dated, signed, specify the issues being challenged, state the reasons the determination is wrong, and give an address for further communication; a timely one commences the administrative proceeding and keeps the determination inoperative pending its outcome.

A method of pay available only to administrative and professional employees: an agreed sum for a single, unique job regardless of how long it takes — not a rate tied to hours or days worked, and not the same payment repeated for identical work. The floor is confirmed by projecting the fee rate to a full workweek and checking that it reaches the required minimum salary level.

Police officers, detectives, deputy sheriffs, state troopers, correctional officers, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, and similar employees who prevent or investigate crime or fight fires — excluded from the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions 'regardless of rank or pay level,' even when they also direct other employees during an investigation or a fire.

A way of computing overtime for a nonexempt employee paid a fixed weekly salary even though the hours worked move up and down from week to week — not a path to exempt status. An employer may use it only when all five of the regulation's conditions are met: hours that fluctuate, a salary fixed regardless of hours, a salary large enough to cover at least minimum wage in the employee's highest-hour week, a clear and mutual understanding that the salary covers all hours worked, and genuine overtime pay of not less than half the week's regular rate on top of the salary. Meeting these five federal conditions does not excuse noncompliance with any stricter state or local law.

A plan, described in § 778.210, that promises additional pay at one fixed percentage applied to both straight-time earnings and overtime earnings, set by contract before the work is performed and paid unconditionally. Because the same percentage lifts both pieces of pay, the arithmetic alone satisfies the Act's overtime requirement, and no separate recomputation of the regular rate is needed.

A bonus excluded from the regular rate on different grounds than a discretionary bonus: it is not compensation for work at all, provided its amount is not measured by or dependent on hours worked, production, or efficiency. A Christmas bonus can be paid every year, in an amount employees have come to expect, and can even scale with salary or length of service, and still qualify — regularity and predictability do not disqualify it, but tying the amount to output does.

One of two showings — alongside reasonable grounds — an employer must make to the court’s satisfaction under the Portal-to-Portal Act before a court may reduce or eliminate liquidated damages. § 790.22(c) directs the court to judge good faith by an objective test: whether the employer acted as a reasonably prudent person would have under the same circumstances, with honesty of intention and no knowledge of circumstances that ought to have prompted further inquiry.

A dollar amount an employer promises to pay for the week no matter how it's split between hourly pay and a “bonus.” Under § 778.502(e), whenever an employee is guaranteed a fixed or determinable sum as wages for the week, no part of that sum is a true bonus — the whole amount is divided by hours actually worked to find the real regular rate, rather than prorated as if a genuine bonus existed alongside it.

The third required element of a section 7(f) contract: a weekly figure — not monthly, semimonthly, or biweekly — paid in full in every workweek the employee performs any work, capped at what the contract's specified regular and overtime rates would produce for 60 hours, and based solely on those specified rates rather than blended with shift differentials, hazard pay, commissions, or piece-rate bonuses.

An employee deemed exempt under section 13(a)(1) of the Act on the strength of high pay rather than the full duties test — one whose total annual compensation reaches the required threshold, whose primary duty is office or non-manual work, and who customarily and regularly performs one or more of the exempt duties of an executive, administrative, or professional employee.

The divisor used to turn total remuneration into the regular rate: the hours the employee actually worked in the workweek. One bounded exception replaces it — where a fixed weekly salary is understood to compensate a specific number of hours, that intended number of hours is used instead of the hours actually worked.

Pay for periods when an employee is out on vacation, holiday, illness, a shortage of work, or 'other similar cause' — an infrequent, sporadic, or unpredictable absence such as jury duty, a funeral, or a weather closure. Excluded from the regular rate when the amount approximately equals what the employee normally earns over a similar stretch, because it substitutes for earnings rather than compensating for hours worked; none of it may be credited toward overtime. A regularly scheduled day of rest or a routine reduction in hours does not qualify.

Deductions from an exempt employee's salary that reduce pay based on the amount or timing of work performed — such as docking pay for a partial-day personal absence — which, if part of an employer's actual practice rather than an isolated incident, strip the exemption from every employee in the same job classification under the responsible manager for the period the practice continued.

The standard for whether work alongside a sale — driving and delivering, display setup, shelf-clearing, or restocking — counts as exempt outside sales work. It qualifies only when it furthers the employee's own sale; the identical task performed for a sale someone else will make does not qualify.

The extension of the medicine carve-out to an employee who holds the degree required for the general practice of medicine and is serving an internship or residency program toward that practice — exempt from the salary basis and salary level tests on the same footing as a licensed, practicing physician, regardless of the stipend paid.

Section 7(f)'s core qualifying condition: the employee's hours below the statutory maximum must vary just as unpredictably as the hours above it, not merely overtime hours fluctuating over a steady base schedule. An employee who can already count on at least 40 hours every week doesn't meet this standard and can't use the exception.

The fourth section 7(e)(4) condition: the employer's contribution must be paid permanently, with no right of return, to a trustee or third person under a funded arrangement, with the trustee bound by ordinary fiduciary duties. The employer may never recapture the funds or divert them to its own use — though a refund of a genuine overpayment made to cover an as-yet-uncertain cost is not treated as recapture.

The professional exemption route for work requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning — law, medicine, theology, accounting, actuarial computation, engineering, architecture, teaching, the physical, chemical, and biological sciences, and pharmacy are the fields named, plus other similar occupations with recognized professional status — customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction. The knowledge must be predominantly intellectual, call for the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment analyzing varying facts, and be unattainable at the high school level. A degree is the best evidence of this, but the exemption also reaches employees who gained substantially the same knowledge through a combination of work experience and intellectual instruction.

Making a sale within the meaning of section 3(k) of the Act — any sale, exchange, contract to sell, consignment for sale, shipment for sale, or other disposition, most often the transfer of title to tangible property, and in certain cases of tangible and valuable evidences of intangible property.

The set of activities that make an employee's primary duty count as executive under this chapter's test — defined broadly to include interviewing, selecting, and training employees; setting their pay and hours; directing their work; handling their complaints and discipline; planning the work and apportioning it among employees; and planning and controlling a budget, among other listed activities.

A pay structure, available to exempt employees generally rather than one exemption category, of a guaranteed weekly salary at or above the required minimum, topped up with commission, a share of sales or profits, bonus payments, extra pay for hours beyond the normal workweek, or paid time off as its own distinct form — without disturbing salary basis.

A guaranteed minimum hourly rate a pieceworker's earnings are measured against. In a week with no waiting time or other differently-paid hours, if the week's piece-rate earnings fall short of what this guaranty would pay for the hours worked, the guaranty itself becomes the regular rate for that week.

Extra pay for working night hours, whether paid as a percentage of the base rate or as cents per hour. It must be included in the regular rate, and none of it may be credited toward overtime, because it compensates for the character of the shift rather than for hours worked beyond a recognized basic workday or workweek.

The written notice the Administrator must issue and serve, in person or by certified mail, on a person charged with a civil money penalty. It must set forth the penalty amount and the reasons for it, the right to take exception and request a hearing, the time and method for doing so, and a warning that the determination becomes final and unappealable if exception is not taken within 15 days of receipt.

Time an employee spends waiting to be called to duty. It counts as hours worked when the restriction on the employee is tight enough that they cannot use the time effectively for personal purposes — typically because they must stay on the employer’s premises, or so close to it that the effect is the same. An employee who is merely required to leave word at home or with the office about how to be reached, without being tied to a location, is not working while on call.

An employee’s regular trip from home to the first work location of the day, and back home at the end of it. This travel is a normal incident of employment rather than hours worked, and stays uncounted even if the employer voluntarily agrees to pay for it as a courtesy. It applies whether the employee reports to the same location every day or to a different job site each morning — only the fact that the trip is the day’s first- or last-work-location journey matters.

An exemption turning on two questions rather than the salary-and-duties test used elsewhere: whether the employee's primary duty is making sales or obtaining orders or contracts for services or the use of facilities, and whether the employee is customarily and regularly engaged away from the employer's place of business in doing that work. Subpart G's salary basis and salary level requirements do not apply to it.

The extra amount paid for overtime hours, above straight-time earnings — one of the twelve items § 516.2(a) requires and one of the items the shortened EAP record drops.

The standard that decides whether an employee's hiring, firing, or other status-change recommendations satisfy the executive exemption without final authority to hire or fire. It turns on factors including whether making such recommendations is part of the employee's job, how often they're made, and how often they're actually relied upon — recommendations solicited only as a formality and then routinely disregarded do not carry it, and the input generally must pertain to employees the executive customarily supervises.

A written request an employer facing peculiar operating conditions may submit to the Administrator, asking for authority to keep records in a different manner or to be relieved of preserving certain records — an arrangement the Administrator may condition and later revoke, and that does not suspend the employer's existing recordkeeping obligations while pending.

Pay earned by the piece rather than by the hour. The regular rate is ordinarily found by totaling the piece-rate earnings plus any other pay such as waiting time and dividing by hours worked — unless the week's piece-rate earnings alone fall short of what a minimum hourly guaranty would pay for the hours worked, in which case that guaranty becomes the regular rate instead, or unless waiting time or another differently-paid rate was worked that week, in which case the regular rate is instead a weighted average of the rates involved.

A federal law that relieves an employer of minimum-wage and overtime liability for time spent walking, riding, or traveling to and from the place where an employee’s principal activities begin or end on a given workday. It pulled some travel time that used to count as work under the Fair Labor Standards Act itself — such as underground travel in mines, or walking from a time clock to a workbench — outside hours worked, unless the employer’s own contract, custom, or practice still treats it as compensable.

The carve-out under which the salary basis and salary level tests do not apply to an employee who holds a valid license or certificate to practice law or medicine and is actually engaged in that practice. In medicine it covers physicians broadly — general practitioners and specialists, osteopathic physicians, podiatrists, dentists, and optometrists among them — but it does not reach pharmacists, nurses, therapists, technologists, sanitarians, dietitians, social workers, psychologists, psychometrists, or other professions that service the medical profession; those remain subject to the ordinary salary tests.

The employee's principal, main, major, or most important duty, determined from all the facts of the job as a whole — including the relative importance of the exempt duties, time spent, freedom from supervision, and salary compared with nonexempt employees — rather than from job title or from whichever task consumes the most hours in a workweek.

The activity or activities an employee is employed to perform. Once the workday begins with a principal activity, travel from job site to job site becomes part of that activity and must be counted as hours worked; only the trip home at the end of the day, or the trip from home at the start, keeps its unpaid commute character.

Work that satisfies three questions: whether there is production — producing, manufacturing, mining, handling, or otherwise working on something; whether that production is of goods; and whether the production is for commerce. An employee actually producing or working on the goods is covered on that basis alone.

Dividing a bonus by hours worked to find its average hourly contribution to the regular rate, then paying half that added rate for overtime hours. It's a valid step for a true bonus, but no fix for a disguised base-pay scheme, because there was never a separate bonus to prorate in the first place.

A percentage-of-earnings “bonus” built backward from a flat weekly total the employer intends to pay no matter what, rather than forward from a fixed rate. Each week the percentage is worked out after the fact, from that week's straight-time and artificial overtime earnings, to close the gap up to the same flat total — so it shrinks as overtime hours climb. Because the total never actually rises with overtime, the employee receives no real overtime compensation, and § 778.503 directs that the correction be computed as shown in § 778.114.

The second showing an employer must make, separate from good faith, before a court may reduce or eliminate liquidated damages under the Portal-to-Portal Act: that the employer had reasonable grounds for believing its act or omission was not a violation of the Act. § 790.22(c) directs the court to judge this by an objective test as well, though it does not say the two tests are the same one.

The requirement, separate from the 60-hour ceiling, that the hours a section 7(f) contract guarantees bear a reasonable relation to the range of hours the employee's duties can actually be expected to require. A guaranty set at or near that likely maximum — even if under 60 hours — makes the contract's specified rate “wholly fictitious” and defeats the exemption.

The regular rate is always an hourly figure — a rate per hour — never simply the pay rate an employer and employee happen to agree on, and never a label a wage contract can define away. Once the amount of wages and the mode of payment are set, finding it is “a matter of mathematical computation”: total remuneration for the workweek, apart from the statutory exclusions, divided by the hours the employee actually worked that same workweek.

Under § 785.39, the hours a particular employee is normally scheduled to work. Overnight travel away from an employee’s home community counts as hours worked whenever it falls within these hours — on a weekend or other nonworking day just as on a normal workday — because the employee is simply substituting travel for other duties. As an enforcement policy, travel outside these hours during which the employee rides as a passenger on a plane, train, boat, bus, or car is not treated as working time.

Repayment for money an employee spent on the employer's behalf — not money the employee would have spent anyway — kept outside the regular rate up to the actual or reasonably approximate cost. Examples include supplies or tools bought for the job, required uniforms and their upkeep, 'over the road' travel and living expenses, and reasonable 'supper money.' A reimbursement disproportionately larger than what was actually spent has the excess pulled back into the regular rate; covering an employee's own ordinary commute or lunch is not reimbursement in this sense and raises the regular rate instead.

A section 6 or section 7 violation is repeated where the employer previously violated section 6 or section 7 and had previously received notice — through a responsible Wage and Hour Division official or another channel carrying the same authoritative weight — that it was allegedly in violation, or where a court or other tribunal already found a prior violation, unless a timely-filed appeal of that finding is still pending or the finding has been set aside or reversed.

A short break, running from about 5 to 20 minutes, that is customarily paid and must be counted as hours worked. An employer cannot offset this paid time against other working time, such as on-call minutes logged the same day. Coffee breaks and time for snacks are rest periods rather than meal periods, so they stay paid.

Protection against losing the exemption over a pattern of improper deductions, available to an employer with a clearly communicated policy prohibiting them, a working complaint mechanism, reimbursement of mistakes, and a good-faith commitment to comply — lost only if the employer willfully keeps making the deductions after an employee complains, or never reimburses.

The first of the three-part exemption test: whether the employee regularly receives a predetermined amount each pay period that is not reduced for variations in the quality or quantity of the work performed. The executive exemption requires salary basis specifically; administrative and professional employees may instead satisfy this test on a fee basis.

The Act's provision letting an employer pay a genuinely irregular-hours employee a single guaranteed weekly sum — covering all hours up to a 60-hour ceiling — under a qualifying contract, rather than splitting pay into a regular rate and hour-by-hour overtime. It is the only provision that allows this; any guaranteed-pay arrangement that doesn't meet its requirements includes all of its compensation in the regular rate, with overtime still owed hour by hour on top.

The credit section 7(h) allows an employer to take, dollar for dollar, against the overtime compensation owed for a workweek, using premium pay already excluded from the regular rate under section 7(e)(5), (6), or (7). Only those three narrow categories of premium qualify; no other extra pay, however generous, may be credited this way.

The Act's provision letting a hospital or residential-care establishment agree with an employee, before the work is performed, to compute overtime over a 14 consecutive-day period instead of the standard 7-day workweek. The option isn't automatic — it applies only where that agreement or understanding is actually reached.

The § 516.3 version of the payroll record for an employee in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity or outside sales: it drops the regular hourly rate, hours worked, straight-time earnings, overtime premium, and wage additions and deductions, and adds the basis on which wages are paid.

A guaranteed minimum number of hours' pay for an employee who reports for a scheduled shift and is not given the expected amount of work, typically arising on infrequent and sporadic occasions. The portion covering hours actually worked is ordinary straight-time or overtime pay; the excess above that is excluded from the regular rate and cannot be credited toward overtime. A payment mandated by state or local law gets the same treatment only if it, too, is paid infrequently or sporadically.

On a shift of 24 hours or more, a bona fide, regularly scheduled sleep period of up to 8 hours may be excluded from hours worked by agreement between employer and employee, but only if the employer furnishes adequate sleeping facilities — facilities sufficient for the employee to usually get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. A longer scheduled sleep period is still credited at only 8 hours. A call to duty during the period counts as hours worked, and if interruptions leave the employee with less than 5 hours of sleep during the scheduled period, the entire period counts as working time.

Under § 785.37, travel to a one-day work assignment in another city, given to an employee who normally works at a fixed location, is treated as part of the day’s principal activity because it is performed for the employer’s benefit and at the employer’s special request. The employer may deduct the travel time the employee would ordinarily have spent commuting from home to the regular workplace, and the usual bona fide meal period; what remains is compensable travel time.

Also called the “Poxon” plan: a scheme that divides an ordinary workday into a low-paid “straight time” portion and a higher-paid “overtime” portion, arranged so the day's total lands exactly where a normal hourly rate would have put it. Because the labeled “overtime” hours are not actually hours beyond the regular workday, and the “straight time” rate is artificially low, the split is fictitious — the regular rate is still total weekly pay divided by total hours actually worked, and additional overtime is owed once the applicable maximum hours standard is exceeded.

The two-year period, running from § 790.21, within which an employee’s action under section 16(b) to enforce a claim for unpaid minimum wages or overtime compensation must be commenced. Because the clock resets for each underpaid workweek, wages that fell due more than two years before a suit is filed generally fall outside it.

Wages due for hours worked, exclusive of the overtime premium — one of the twelve items § 516.2(a) requires and one of the items the shortened EAP record drops.

The principle that neither a pay plan's name nor the label on an individual payment changes what's actually owed. The Department of Labor's overtime rules at § 778.500 recompute the regular rate from total compensation actually paid divided by hours actually worked, whatever an employer calls the arrangement.

The Act’s definition of “employ” (§ 785.6), which makes work count as hours worked whenever an employer knows, or has reason to believe, it is happening — regardless of whether the employer scheduled or requested it, and regardless of any custom, contract, or agreement not to pay for it (§ 785.8). An employee who stays past quitting time to finish an assigned task, correct errors, or complete paperwork is working under this standard, because “the reason is immaterial” (§ 785.11).

The carve-out under which the salary basis and salary level tests do not apply at all to an employee whose primary duty is teaching, tutoring, instructing, or lecturing — imparting knowledge — while employed as a teacher by an educational establishment. It reaches far beyond the classroom: regular academic teachers, driving instructors, aircraft flight instructors, and music instructors are all named exempt teachers, and a state teaching certificate isn't required everywhere for the exemption to apply.

The sum tested against the highly compensated employee threshold over a 52-week period set by the employer. It must include a weekly amount paid on a pure salary or fee basis — without the bonus allowance available under the standard exemption — plus commissions, nondiscretionary bonuses, and other nondiscretionary compensation. It excludes board, lodging, or other facilities, and payments for insurance, retirement contributions, or other fringe benefits.

The name section 778.502(a) reserves for a sum paid as an addition to total wages, usually for extra effort, loyal service, or as a gift. The label is improperly applied to a portion of regular wages the employee is already entitled to receive under the wage contract — wherever an employee is guaranteed a fixed or determinable sum as wages each week, no part of that sum is a true bonus, whatever the pay stub calls it.

The executive exemption's staffing requirement, counted in full-time equivalents rather than headcount — one full-time employee plus two half-time employees satisfies it, and so do four half-time employees. It can be split among several supervisors as long as each one customarily and regularly directs at least two full-time workers of their own, but the same employee's hours cannot be counted toward two different supervisors' totals at once, and merely filling in for the actual manager during their absence does not satisfy it.

The method for finding the regular rate when an employee genuinely performs two or more different kinds of work in a workweek, each at its own lawful nonovertime rate: total earnings from all the rates divided by total hours worked at all of them. It's what separates a lawful multi-rate arrangement from the split-day plan, whose two rates attach to identical work rather than different work.

Under § 578.3(c), a violation where the employer knew its conduct was prohibited by the Act or showed reckless disregard for whether it complied, judged by weighing all the facts and circumstances together. A willfulness finding raises the civil money penalty exposure tied to a section 6 or section 7 violation under § 578.3(a)(2).

The fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods — that every pay and overtime calculation runs on. It need not match the calendar week and can start on any day or hour an employer sets, but once fixed it stays fixed unless changed permanently; each workweek stands alone, with no averaging of hours across two or more weeks.