Basics

• Employees in Oregon must receive overtime pay for all hours over 40 in any work week. In accordance with both federal and state laws, overtime pay for any employee is a minimum of 1.5 times the regular pay rate. If an employee who earns $10 an hour has to work 60 hours one week, his pay rate for the final 20 hours would be $15.
  
  

Considerations

• Employers in Oregon may establish a work week of their choosing for the purposes of determining overtime pay, as long as the work week is regularly recurring. Employers who use biweekly or monthly pay periods may not average employees' hours over multiple weeks to avoid paying overtime. If an employee works 43 hours one week, the employer may not get out of paying three hours of overtime by reducing her hours to 37 the next week.
  
  

Misconceptions

• Although Oregon labor laws provide for premium payments when employees work overtime, they do not place limits on the number of hours employees may have to work. In theory, according to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry, employers may require employees to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Exceptions apply for employees of manufacturing industries, who may work no more than 13 hours a day, and employees younger than 16, who may work no more than three hours on school days and eight hours on non-school days. Employees do not have a right to overtime for exceeding a certain number of hours in a day. The only standard is hours worked per week.
  
  

Alternative

• For employees of Oregon government agencies only, employers may substitute compensatory time for overtime pay. Compensatory time is paid time off -- for example, an hour or 1.5 hours for every hour of overtime. For employers in the private sector, comp time is not a legal alternative to overtime pay.
  
  

Exemptions

• For some employees in Oregon, overtime payment rules do not apply. Federal and state laws grant employers exemptions from overtime laws for certain categories of employees. The most common exemptions are for "white collar" workers whose jobs qualify as executive, administrative or professional based on statutory definitions. Duties tests, as established by law, determine whether an employee meets one of those definitions. To be exempt, an employee also must receive pay as a salary rather than an hourly wage. Federal laws require an exempt employee's annual salary to be at least $455 a week as of 2011. Some computer professionals also qualify for a "white collar" exemption.