Time-and-a-half is payment to a worker (or workers) at 1.5 times their usual hourly rate. It is usually paid as an incentive to work on a particular day (such as Saturday) or as government-mandated compensation for having workers work on particular days (such as
public holiday
A public holiday, national holiday, or legal holiday is a holiday generally established by law and is usually a non-working day during the year.
Sovereign nations and territories observe holidays based on events of significance to their history, ...
s).
New Zealand
In
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, if an employee works on a public holiday, the employee gets time-and-a-half for the hours worked and, if the day was an otherwise working day for the employee, an alternative holiday to take at another time.
United States
In the United States, this provision, as well as the minimum wage, was first instituted by the
Fair Labor Standards Act
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and "time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppres ...
. The act was passed in 1938, during the Great Depression.
Overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society), ...
pay was intended as a penalty or fine upon the employer, not as a bonus to the employee. Hoping to increase employment opportunities, Congress encouraged employers to hire more workers for the same amount of time: it was believed to be better for three workers to work forty hours per week than for two workers to work for sixty hours per week.
See also
*
Overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society), ...
— double time
References
Labor rights
Working time
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