Hello,

I work for an excavating company and we do alot of prevailing rate work. Alot of weeks I will have 50 to 60 hours a week. It is mixed between prevailing rate jobs and regular jobs where I get my regular rate. My questions are:

1. If I work about 20 hours regular rate the first two days off my pay period, then I go on a prevailing rate job and work another 30 hours in the same pay week, should my over time be prevailing rate, regular rate, or an average of both?

2. If anyone has the answer to the above question, could they possibly provide a link with some information on it?

I have a feeling I have been getting cheated for years and any help would be greatly appreciated. I have searched here and the web with no answers for PA, only for other states.

Hello,

I work for an excavating company and we do alot of prevailing rate work. Alot of weeks I will have 50 to 60 hours a week. It is mixed between prevailing rate jobs and regular jobs where I get my regular rate. My questions are:

1. If I work about 20 hours regular rate the first two days off my pay period, then I go on a prevailing rate job and work another 30 hours in the same pay week, should my over time be prevailing rate, regular rate, or an average of both?

2. If anyone has the answer to the above question, could they possibly provide a link with some information on it?

I have a feeling I have been getting cheated for years and any help would be greatly appreciated. I have searched here and the web with no answers for PA, only for other states.


I too worked for a Heavy Highway Construction company in the office. What our company would do would make sure that the employees would not fall into what you described so that they did not need to pay the OT on Prevailing Rates (which we both know is a WONDERFUL rate in PA). They would schedule the people to work Prevailing Rate jobs in the beginning of the week and then Shop (regular) rate at the end of the week so that the OT was paid on the lesser rate.

I do not know of any links to this - however I worked in that industry for 18+ years and I believe that you would be entitled to OT on Prevailing Rate if you in fact were working on a prevailing rated job. The company I worked for would gladly pay OT to the people that worked there all week but tried to avoid your situation.

If you go to DOL website for PA it gives you the option to ask a question.

Federal law provides two ways of calculating overtime when an employee has more than one rate of pay during a work week.

The default version pays OT based upon the average rate of pay for the week. For example, EE works 25 hours @ $10.00 and 35 hours @$15.00. The total straight time comes to $775.00 for 60 hours of work, or $12.92 per hour. The EE is owed 20 hours OT @ $6.46.

Using that way of calculating OT, it does not matter if the employee works the higher rate at the beginning of the week or the end (when OT hours are worked).

The Feds do allow an alternative which has OT calculated based on the wage in effect for the hours worked over 40, but the employee and employer must agree to this before the work begins.