A hospital might make use of employees as overtime-exempt specialists who concurrently take shifts performing nonexempt employees nurse work throughout the identical workweek with out altering the workers’ exemption standing below the Honest Labor Requirements Act, the U.S. Division of Labor stated in an opinion letter issued Thursday.
The doc is one among a group of 4 letters issued final week by DOL Wage and Hour Division Administrator Andrew Rogers. Rogers stated the FLSA’s government, administrative {and professional} extra time exemption applies to workers whose “main obligation” entails efficiency of exempt work.
Per the letter, the specialists’ main obligation continued to be the efficiency of exempt work, whilst they often took up two shifts per week on weekends as employees nurses performing nonexempt work and had been paid further hourly compensation for that work. Employers might present further compensation to exempt workers paid on a wage foundation with out violating the FLSA’s salary-basis requirement, in response to the letter.
A second letter additionally addressed extra time pay necessities. Particularly, the employer supplied a quarterly bonus program by which award quantities are decided by a system that multiplies a proportion of the employer’s whole gross compensation paid to all eligible workers in the course of the quarter by the accessible bonus pool quantity. The employer didn’t present further extra time pay on the bonus as a result of it believed the bonus quantity paid to every eligible worker constituted a simultaneous fee of any required extra time pay.
Rogers stated that such an association is compliant with the FLSA supplied that the bonus quantity is calculated as a proportion of whole earnings as a bonus as described in DOL rules. However the administrator famous that such bonuses should not embrace any quantities beforehand excluded from the worker’s common fee of pay for the needs of calculating extra time premiums.
The bonus quantity obtained by eligible workers “should be a proportion of every worker’s whole earnings — each straight-time earnings and extra time earnings — that doesn’t dilute the extra time portion of the ratio,” Rogers added.
The 2 remaining letters printed Thursday concern the compensability of sure off-site journey throughout meal intervals in addition to pre-shift actions and ready time.
DOL has addressed extra time calculation points a number of instances because the relaunch of its opinion letter program in mid-2025. In January, the division issued letters on the function of sure performance-based bonuses and pre-shift time in extra time pay, whereas an October 2025 batch tackled situations like that of an worker working for 2 separate however operationally built-in companies.
The letters are typically seen as useful compliance help instruments for employers, and DOL officers — together with present Appearing Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling — have stated as a lot up to now. Thursday’s paperwork additionally represent a observe as much as DOL’s current resolution to rescind the extra time closing rule issued by the Biden administration in 2024.
DOL’s opinion letter program is open to events past employers, nonetheless, and anybody from workers to labor unions to HR professionals themselves can submit an opinion letter request. Attorneys beforehand advised HR Dive that such requests ought to define a selected, factual state of affairs with an in depth clarification of the employer’s assumptions concerning the regulation or rules at subject with out together with delicate data the employer doesn’t need revealed.
