Are employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) entitled to receive overtime pay for time spent in entry-level training on the sixth day of a 6-day training course?
FLSA-covered (nonexempt) employees are entitled to receive
overtime pay for time spent in entry-level training on the sixth day of a
6-day training course under the conditions specified below.
Time spent in apprenticeship or other entry-level training outside regular working hours
is not considered hours of work, provided no productive work is
performed during such periods (see 5 CFR 551.423(a)(3)). However, under
5 CFR 551.423(a)(1), time spent in training during regular working hours
is considered hours of work. The regulations at 5 CFR 551.421 clarify
that, for purposes of part 551, "regular working hours" means the days
and hours of an employee's regularly scheduled administrative workweek
established under 5 CFR part 610. The phrase "regularly scheduled
administrative workweek" is defined in 5 CFR 610.102 as the period
within an administrative workweek within which an employee is regularly
scheduled to work. Also, see the definition of "regularly scheduled
work" in 5 CFR 610.102, which hinges on whether the work was scheduled
in advance of the administrative workweek.
When FLSA-covered employees are scheduled in advance of the
administrative workweek to attend a 6-day entry-level training class
for a specified number of hours (e.g., 8 hours), those regularly scheduled training hours
on the sixth day are "regular working hours" and are considered hours
of work for overtime pay purposes. For example, an FLSA-covered
employee who is required to attend a 6-day training session at the
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) is entitled to overtime
pay for the sixth day of training, since the employee was scheduled in
advance of the administrative workweek to attend the FLETC training
course. Because the regularly scheduled training hours on the sixth day
are considered to be "regular working hours" (and the training will not
occur outside regular working hours), it is irrelevant that the FLETC
training is entry-level training and that no productive work is being
performed.
Agencies are responsible for determining whether an
employee is entitled to receive overtime pay for regularly scheduled
training hours under the conditions specified above. Agencies may need
to recompute an employee's overtime pay entitlement and provide back pay
under 5 CFR part 550, subpart H, for overtime hours that occurred
during regularly scheduled training.