On July 1, 2019, new Wage and Hour Administrator Cheryl M. Stanton issued three opinion letters addressing FLSA compliance issues related to calculation of overtime pay when an employee receives discretionary bonuses, whether paralegals fit under the highly compensated employee exemption, and rounding practices used in calculating hours worked. Overtime pay, nondiscretionary bonuses. This opinion letter addresses the calculation of overtime pay for nondiscretionary bonuses paid on a quarterly and annual basis (FLSA2019-7). The inquirer sought an opinion as to whether the FLSA requires an employer to include a nondiscretionary bonus that is a fixed percentage of straight-time wages received over multiple workweeks in the calculation of the employees’ regular rate of pay at the end of each workweek; if not, whether the employer may, when paying the bonus, recalculate the regular rate for each workweek of the bonus period by averaging the bonus earnings across the workweeks.
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