I saw a company my friend worked for get in trouble with the US Dept
of Labor for that ... not paying overtime. In order to be required to
pay it, the company income has to be at or above a certain threshold,
I'm not sure what that is. Anyway, their reason in not paying it is
that working overtime was 'voluntary', so they just paid straight-
pay ... for years. Well, in addition to a hefty fine and damaged
reputation, the company had to go back just 2 years and pay everyone
that worked overtime the money that was due, whether they still worked
there or not.

Besides, how loyal can you be to your loyal employees if you won't pay
them the overtime.

On Dec 9, 8:59 am, Stan Brown wrote:
Sat, 8 Dec 2007 10:08:00 -0800 from Raisincain
:

Department of labor laws state that every hour over 40 per week
must be paid at 1.5 the normal hourly rate. My employees have
agreed to take a cut in pay to enable me to pay them whatever
amount is necessary if, when overtime is applied, they average out
to $7.00 per hour. In other words, they are willing to work for 40
hours per week at x amount and a variable number of hours for x*1.5
as long as the x +(x*1.5) averages $7.00 per hour.

This is not an Excel answer, but a legal one. I'm not a lawyer, but
I believe you're buying yourself a heap of trouble. Check with your
state's department of labor, and I'll bet you'll find this scheme is
illegal.

If I am not mistaken, U.S. and state laws require that overtime
employees who are not exempt must be paid 1.5 times their *regular*
rate. If their regular rate is $7 an hour, you must pay them $10.50
for overtime.

The law doesn't let you reduce their regular rate for their overtime
hours and then reinstate it for their straight-time hours, not even
with their consent. (This is to prevent employers pressuring
employees into just the sort of scheme you propose.) Even if it did,
the reduced rate would be 2/3 of $7.00, or about $4.67, which is well
below minimum wage and therefore a *second* violation.

If you can't afford to pay overtime, you can't have workers work
overtime.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/