OVERVIEW
Introduction Premium pay and differentials for full-time General Schedule (GS) employees are additional pay authorized for overtime, holiday, night or Sunday work, hazardous or standby duty, law enforcement availability, or administratively uncontrollable work when the work has been ordered and approved by authorized persons and performed by the employee.
For Additional
Information
For information about premium pay and differentials for part-time,
intermittent, Title 38/Baylor Plan, or Federal Wage System employees, or for non-standard tours, see the respective chapters.
Information about premium pay and differentials for General Schedule employees may also be found in the following:
HHS Instruction 550-1, Premium Pay 5 CFR, Part 550, Subpart A
Title 5 - Government Organization and Employees GAO Title 6, Chapter 3
OVERTIME
Introduction Most full-time GS employees on regularly scheduled tours are paid overtime if they work more than 8 hours a day or more than 40 hours in an administrative workweek. Overtime includes both regularly
scheduled overtime and unscheduled irregular or occasional overtime.
Exceptions - Alternative Work Schedules
Employees who have flexible work schedules, and for whom credit hours are applicable, receive overtime pay only for excess hours which are not credit hours.
Employees who are authorized to work compressed work schedules earn overtime only for work in excess of those specified hours that constitute the compressed schedule. (i.e., over 8 hours if their scheduled day is an 8 hour day, over 9 hours if it is a scheduled 9 hour day, etc.).
Important Each OPDIV is required to ensure that overtime is properly approved, recorded, and documented. Documentation must be maintained with time and attendance data for six years.
Time and attendance records must distinguish between unscheduled irregular or occasional overtime and regularly scheduled overtime. Therefore, it is important that you know the difference between the two types, and that overtime is recorded under the correct, applicable transaction code.
With the exception of emergencies, overtime must be authorized both in advance and in writing. In emergencies, employees may be ordered to work overtime without prior approval, provided that approval is documented the next work day.
For employees on non-reimbursable details outside the Department, OPDIVs must ensure that a clear understanding exists with the gaining organization with respect to when overtime may be worked and whether the cost of any overtime will be reimbursed.
Overtime and
Paid Leave
For overtime purposes, hours during which the employee is absent on paid leave are considered to be hours of work. Use of paid leave does not
reduce the amount of overtime to which the employee is entitled.
OVERTIME
Overtime and Unpaid Leave
Use of unpaid leave does affect overtime pay. It reduces the amount of overtime to which the employee is entitled. See Chapter 5 for information regarding substituting overtime for unpaid leave.
Overtime
Hourly Rate
Employees with rates of basic pay equal to or less than the rate of basic pay for GS-10, Step1, the overtime hourly rate is the employee’s hourly rate of basic pay multiplied by 1.5.
Under the amended 5 U.S.C. 5542(a)(2), for employees with rates of basic pay greater than the basic pay for GS-10, Step 1, the overtime rate is the
greater of---
(1) the hourly rate of basic pay for GS-10, step 1, multiplied by 1.5, or
(2) the employee’s hourly rate of basic pay.
The hourly overtime pay limitations do not apply to prevailing rate (wage) mployees or to FLSA overtime pay.
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Limitations Biweekly pay limitation that limits the amount of premium pay that can be paid during a biweekly pay period under 5 U.S.C. 5547(a) and 5 CFR 550.105 premium pay cannot be paid to General Schedule employees (including law enforcement officers and other covered employees) to the extent that doing so would cause an employee’s basic pay, overtime pay, the dollar value of compensatory time off, night pay, annual premium pay, Sunday premium pay and holiday premium pay to exceed the greater of the biweekly rate for—
(1) GS-15, Step 10 (including any applicable special salary rate or locality rate of pay),
or
(2) Level V of the Executive.
Exception: For employees performing emergency work (as determined by the agency head or OPM), or mission-critical work (as determined by the agency head), premium pay cannot be paid which causes the total of basic pay and premium pay to exceed the greater of the annual rate for-
(1) GS-15, Step 10 (including any applicable special salary rate or locality rate of pay),
or
(2) Level V of the Executive.
OVERTIME
Limitations continued
These limitations do not apply to wage employees or to FLSA overtime pay.
Note: The following types of premium pay remain subject to a biweekly limitation when other premium payments are subject to an annual
limitation:
(1) Standby duty pay under 5 U.S.C. 5545(c)(1);
(2) Administratively uncontrollable overtime under 5 U.S.C. 5545(c)(2);
(3) Availability pay for criminal investigators under 5 U.S.C. 5545a; and
(4) Overtime pay for hours in the regular tour of duty of a firefighter covered by 5 U.S.C. 5545b.
Compensatory Time Off: The biweekly pay limitation in 5 U.S.C. 5547 is also a ceiling on compensatory time off.
Suffer and Permit Overtime
Supervisors should not permit unauthorized work by employees outside their tour hours. If, however, FLSA non-exempt employees perform work for the benefit of DHHS, whether requested or not:
• During hours outside the established tour, and
• Which the supervisor knows about, or has reason to believe is being performed, and has an opportunity to prevent,
They are entitled to irregular or occasional overtime pay referred to as suffer and permit overtime.
Note: Employees on flexible work schedules are not entitled to suffer and permit overtime pay.
On-Call Status Time spent in an on-call status is not considered hours of work and is not paid as overtime if the employee:
• Is allowed to leave a telephone number or to carry a "beeper" to allow quick contact, even though the employee is required to remain within a reasonable call-back radius; or
• Is allowed to make arrangements for any required work during the on- call period to be performed by another person.
See the Callback Overtime and Regularly Scheduled Standby Duty sections in this chapter for other related information.
OVERTIME
Travel Time spent on travel is considered overtime only when:
1. It is requested and approved in advance; and
2. It is within the employee's regularly scheduled administrative workweek, including regular overtime work; or
• involves the performance of actual work while traveling,
• is incident to travel that involves the performance of work while traveling,
• is carried out under such arduous and unusual conditions that the travel is inseparable from work,
• results from an event which could not be scheduled or controlled administratively, including travel by an
employee to such an event and the return of the employee to his or her official duty station.
Training,
Meetings, or Conferences
For FLSA non-exempt employees, time spent outside regular working hours to attend training (including preparatory time for attendance at training) shall be considered overtime if:
• The employee is directed by the agency to participate in the training (means that the training is required by the agency and the employee's performance or continued retention in the current position will be adversely affected by non-enrollment in such training); and
• The purpose of the training is to improve the employee's
performance of the duties and responsibilities of current position (not upward mobility training).
Time spent outside regular working hours to attend lectures, meetings, or conferences shall be considered overtime if the employee:
• Is directed by the agency to attend the event; or
• Performs work for the benefit of the agency during such attendance.
OVERTIME
Types of Overtime
Types of overtime include:
• Regularly scheduled overtime
• Unscheduled irregular or occasional overtime
(includes preshift/postshift activities and callback overtime)
• Administratively uncontrollable overtime
• Regularly scheduled standby duty
• PL 85-580 (double time for Quarantine inspectors)
• Compensatory time