Page:Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt.pdf/1

(Slip Opinion)

Respondent Michael Hewitt filed an action against his employer, petitioner Helix Energy Solutions Group, seeking overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which guarantees overtime pay to covered employees when they work more than 40 hours a week. From 2014 to 2017, Hewitt worked for Helix on an offshore oil rig, typically working 84 hours a week while on the vessel. Helix paid Hewitt on a daily-rate basis, with no overtime compensation. So Hewitt’s paycheck, issued every two weeks, amounted to his daily rate times the number of days he had worked in the pay period. Under that compensation scheme, Hewitt earned over $200,000 annually. Helix asserts that Hewitt was exempt from the FLSA because he qualified as “a bona fide executive.” 29 U. S. C. §213(a)(1). Under applicable regulations, an employee is considered a bona fide executive excluded from the FLSA’s protections if the employee meets three distinct tests: (1) the “salary basis” test, which requires that an employee receive a predetermined and fixed salary that does not vary with the amount of time worked; (2) the “salary level” test, which requires that preset salary to exceed a specified amount; and (3) the job “duties” test. See 84 Fed. Reg. 51230. The Secretary of Labor has implemented the bona fide executive standard through two separate and slightly different rules, one “general rule” applying to employees making less than $100,000 in annual compensation, and a different rule addressing “highly compensated employees” (HCEs) who make at least $100,000 per year. 29 CFR §§541.100, 541.601(a), (b)(1). The general rule considers employees to be executives when they are “[c]ompensated on a salary basis” (salary-basis test); “at a rate of not less than $455 per week” (salary-level test); and carry out three listed