Applicable Florida Employment Laws:
FL Minimum Wage- Pursuant to Florida’s Department of Labor, Labor Standards, Florida’s minimum wage is $8.10 as of January 1, 2017.
40 hours x $8.10/hour = $324.00
Time & Half = $12.15
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So you would need to compensate your employees at least $324.00 per week for a 40 hour work week and $12.15 per hour for any hour over 40 hours per week.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, As Amended; 29 U.S.C. 201, et seq.
(herein after “FLSA”)
Scope of application:
Deals in Commerce- this Act applies to you if your business buys and/or sells items across state boarders to operate your business or in the course of your business ; AND,
$500,000.00 a year- this Act applies to you if your business does $500,000.00 or more a year gross volume of sales or receipts; or,
Is a Federal, state, or local government agency; or,
Is a hospital, or an institution primarily engaged in the care of the sick, the aged, or the mentally ill or mentally retarded who live on the premises (it does not matter if the hospital or institution is public or private or is operated for profit or not-for-profit); or,
Is a pre-school; elementary or secondary school or institution of higher learning (e.g., college); or a school for mentally or physically handicapped or gifted children (it does not matter if the school or institution is public or private or operated for profit or not-for-profit)
The first prong is very easily met for most business. As to the second prong, you will have to see how your business is classified.
Work Week Defined § 778.104 and § 778.105
“The Act takes a single workweek as its standard and does not permit averaging of hours over 2 or more weeks. Thus, if an employee works 30 hours one week and 50 hours the next, he must receive overtime compensation for the overtime hours worked beyond the applicable maximum in the second week, even though the average number of hours worked in the 2 weeks is 40…. An employee’s workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It need not coincide with the calendar week but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day. Once the beginning time of an employee’s workweek is established, it remains fixed regardless of the schedule of hours worked by him.
Therefore, it is important that you map out your “work weeks” and keep them consistent for each employee. Examples would be
Monday to Sunday, Wednesday to Tuesday, and Sunday to Saturday. Your classified work week will go hand in hand with your defined pay periods whether it is weekly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly.
“On Call” Pay for Non-Productive Hours Distinguished by FLSA under §778.223:
“Under the Act an employee must be compensated for all hours worked. As a general rule the term “hours worked” will include: (a) All time during which an employee is required to be on duty or to be on the employer’s premises or at the prescribed workplace AND [emphasis added] (b) all time during which an employee is suffered or permitted to work whether or not he is required to do so. Thus working time is not limited to the hours spent in active productive labor, but includes given time by the employee to the employer even though part of the time may be spent in idleness. Some of the hours spent by employees, under certain circumstances, in such activities as waiting for work, remaining “on call”, traveling on the employer’s business or to and from workplaces, and in meal periods and rest periods are regarded as working time and some are not…. Such compensation is treated in the same manner as compensation for any other working time and is… included in the regular rate of pay… unless is qualifies for exclusion from the regular rate as one of a type of “payments made for occasional [emphasis added] periods when no work is performed due to [things such as] failure of the employer to provide sufficient work, … [holidays, vacations, sickness, jury service, attending funeral of family member, inability to reach the workplace because of weather conditions]…. If the employees who are thus on call are not confined to their homes or to any particular place [emphasis added], but
may come and go as they please, provided that they leave word where they may be reached, the hours spent “on call” are not considered as hours worked….”
Application of this “on call” section dictates that employees should be compensated for the hours in which they sleep if they are required to remain on your premises and are not permitted to come and go as they please. Time and a half pay would be required if the employee has already worked 40 or more hours during that work week. If you permit your employees to come and go as they please but require them to be available for your call for them to come back to work or to take a phone call, then the employees should be compensated for the actual time spent working. If that additional time constitutes them working more than 40 hours in any given work week, then that time must be compensated at time and a half pay.
Florida’s Laws as to “On Call”
States can enact employment laws governing on call employment beyond what is necessary under federal law. Pursuant to Florida’s Department of Labor, Florida law does not address on call compensation. Employers must comply only with the Federal Labor Regulations administered by the U.S. Department of Labor.