Some employers have been known to pay employees a fixed hourly rate whether they work 30 hours in a week or 70 hours in a week. This pay practice is sometimes referred to as “straight time” pay. In essence, an employer has decided not to pay “one and a half” times the hourly rate for overtime. In this case, the evidence can be really simple – if one is paid $10 for their first hour of work and $10 for their 45th hour of work. So, let’s say someone worked 45 hours a week one week, and 48 hours a week another, an employer would be paying “straight time” if they paid their employees $450 and $480 for those two weeks in this example. But here is the problem: if the person’s job duties qualify them for overtime pay, they are not getting paid $15 an hour for the hours worked past 40 in a week. In this case, some people say that they owe the person “half time” because they have already paid the employee the regular hourly rate for all hours worked.
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