California’s unique double-time pay rules ensure workers receive fair compensation for extended hours and consecutive workdays. Learn about eligibility, calculations, and scenarios for double overtime in this comprehensive guide.
By Brad Nakase, Attorney
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Overtime compensation is due to the vast majority of American workers if they put in more than 40 hours in a week. It is sometimes referred to as “time-and-a-half” premium pay because the standard rate of pay for overtime is 1.5 times your regular rate.
But certain workers have a right to more. An employee would receive double their regular rate of compensation under double time pay, as opposed to the standard overtime rate of one and a half. While it, in conjunction with overtime, can have a significant impact, the majority of workers are not subject to double time.
Due to the lack of a federal “double time definition” by the Department of Labor, there are currently no mandates in place to pay employees twice their regular rate for overtime.
Next, we’ll go over the situations in which double overtime is applicable.
While the Fair Labor Standards Act is the primary federal statute regulating overtime pay, the majority of states have also enacted legislation to set regulations for this type of compensation. A number of states have passed minimum wage increases that are higher than the federal level, but when it comes to overtime, only one of those states has done the same: California.
The Department of Industrial Relations in California states that there are two scenarios in which qualified workers in the state gain the right to double-time pay:
It is legal for workers to receive double time for any hours worked above 12 in a single day.
Working seven days in a row within a single workweek entitles the worker to double time for each hour worked following the first eight hours on the 7th day.
First things first: there are a lot of ways in which California’s labor laws are different from the rest.
Overtime pay in California is not limited to hours worked each week, unlike federal standards and most state legislation. The Golden Statenot only mandates weekly overtime pay, but also pays eligible (or “non-exempt”) workers for all hours worked above eight in a single workday. When the time comes to figure out how to calculate double time in California correctly, this regulation will come into play.
Determining the correct double time rate is typically not hard, especially when dealing with hourly employees. To do this, simply double your regular hourly income. Earn $14 per hour on average? Your hourly rate is $28 when you work double time.
You won’t truly get overtime pay based on your regular hourly rate, though. Rather, when calculating an employee’s overtime rate, employers should take into account all of their non-overtime compensation.
This means that the overtime calculation for a particular week may need to include some payments that aren’t an hourly rate, such as bonuses and commissions.
For employees with regular paychecks who are also eligible for overtime pay, things get trickier. Once you have your lump sum pay, you can convert it into an hourly rate to determine your double-time pay rate. Your real working hours determine the weekly adjustment to this hourly rate conversion. Additionally, you should review your work contract to determine the exact number of hours that your income is meant to cover. Typically, it ranges from 35 to 40 hours per week.
So, you work for two weeks and get $1,400 in salary. That works up to $700 weekly, and after reviewing your contract, you find out that a workweek is 35 hours. After dividing $700 by 35 hours, your standard rate of pay would be $20 per hour.
In the above example, your double-time pay rate would be $40 per hour, which is the result of multiplying your regular rate by two.
Examples
These examples should help you make sense of the complex double time laws in California:
Twelve or More Hours Per Day
On Mondays, Lucy works fourteen hours. Her employer will be required to determine her overtime pay in accordance with California’s wage rules. On the other hand, she puts in more than 12 hours of work, so she’ll be eligible for double-time pay on top of her regular overtime.
Calculation of Overtime and Double Time
Consider Lucy’s day as divided into three parts:
Beginning with Lucy’s first hour on the job and ending with her eighth, we have the first chunk of time. For these eight hours, she should be compensated at her regular rate of forty hours per week, as overtime is not yet necessary.
Part two occurs between eight and twelve hours on the job, when Lucy is eligible for the California overtime rate of compensation but not double time as of yet.
Part three of the time span starts at twelve hours worked and concludes at fourteen hours, when Lucy ceased working. For those two last hours, she should get double the normal rate of pay.
Let us say that Lucy usually makes $10 an hour. For the first eight hours, she will earn that much, for a grand total of eighty dollars. Simply multiplying Lucy’s base salary by 1.5 will give us her overtime wage. To compensate for the four hours of overtime she put in, she should receive sixty dollars, or fifteen dollars per hour. We need to figure out Lucy’s two hours of double time, which are worth $20 an hour, in order to finish the picture. The double time segment comes out to $40. Lucy should get $180 during her 12-hour workday after adding up all of her compensation.
How long is a workweek? A workweek is defined as seven consecutive 24-hour days under federal and California state statutes. Workweeks, in a nutshell, need not begin on Mondays.
However, to keep things simple, let’s assume that your work week begins on Monday and ends on Monday, just like the majority of employees. Keep in mind that every time Monday comes around, your workweek starts over, at least in our scenario. To qualify for double-time compensation in California, you must work eight hours or more on any one day and work all seven days in a row from one Monday to the next.
On the flip side, let’s pretend you’re sick and start working on Tuesday instead of Monday. The following Tuesday is the last day of your seven-day workweek. The issue is that out of the seven days you worked consecutively, one of them did not fall within a workweek. In your typical Monday–to–Monday plan, that last Tuesday simply does not work. If this happened, you wouldn’t get double pay for working seven days in a row, no matter how hard you worked.
Whether you worked all seven days in a given workweek is, therefore, the most important factor to consider. If that’s the case, you’d be eligible for double compensation for any hours worked over 8 on the seventh day in a row. You might not have much luck otherwise.
There is no state that pays overtime at a rate lower than “time-and-a-half,” or 1.5 times the ordinary rate of pay.
However, there are cases where the state legislation is irrelevant since some companies promise double pay (often in addition to overtime) in the hopes that workers will agree to work extra shifts that they would otherwise dislike. For instance, working on government holidays, overnight shifts, or, very rarely, on the weekends could earn you double time.
Remember that paying double time is not mandated under the federal Fair Labor Standards, which govern standard payroll procedures in the United States.
Companies can decide to pay their workers double time for two reasons: to show appreciation or to fill shifts that nobody wants to work. For that reason, instead of looking into federal labor rules, you should consult your company’s manual to see if double-time pay applies.
Possible outliers include union workers. In addition to overtime, some union contracts include a double-time rate of pay, which can be very helpful on very long workdays; nevertheless, this is something you should verify with your specific contract.
If your overtime pay is incorrect, what are your options? The two primary choices available to most employees in the event of a wage violation are (1) contacting the Department of Labor to begin the claims process or (2) suing their employer in court.
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