Tag Archives: Overtime Law

Most nations have Overtime Law laws designed to dissuade or prevent employers from forcing their employees to work excessively long hours. These laws may allow other considerations than the humanitarian, such as increasing the overall level of employment in the economy. One common approach to regulating Overtime Law is to require employers to pay workers at a higher hourly rate for Overtime Law work. Companies may choose to pay workers higher Overtime Law pay even if not obliged to do so through law, particularly if they believe that they face a backward bending supply curve of labour.

Overtime Law Coverage

The state Overtime Law law applies to most Wisconsin employers, including state and local units of government but not necessary to each individual worker.  Covered workers, regardless of age, must be paid 1 1/2 times their regular pay rate for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours a week.

The law applies to factories, mercantile (see definition of mercantile) or mechanical establishments, restaurants, hotels, motels, resorts, beauty parlour*, retail and wholesale stores, laundries, express and transportation firms, telegraph offices and telephone exchanges.

“Mercantile” means “pertaining to merchants or trade,” and is viewed with respect to profit or designed for profit; designed for mass appeal, emphasizing skill and subjects useful in business. “Trade” means the business or work in which one engages regularly, an occupation requiring manual or mechanical skill; the persons engaged in an occupation, business, or industry, dealings between persons or groups, the business of buying and selling or bartering commodities or services, to do business with, to have dealings, to give one thing in exchange for another.

Under the Wisconsin Child Labor regulation, 16 and 17-year-old minors may be employed more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week when school is not in session provided that they receive one and half times the regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 10 hours per day or 40 hours per week, and that they do not work in excess of 50 hours per week. The exception t