Page:Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt.pdf/17

Rh non-sequiturs. Hewitt’s high daily pay ensured that the HCE rule’s salary-level requirement would not have prevented his exemption: $963 (per day) is indeed more than $455 (per week). But before any discussion of salary level comes in, an employer must pay an employee on a salary basis. And here is where it helps to really look at §602(a)’s text, because it describes when an employee is paid on a “salary basis.” He is paid that way (pardon the repetition) when he gets a “predetermined amount” that cannot be changed because of “the number of days or hours” he labors, but instead must be paid “without regard to [that] number”; when he receives his “full salary for any week” in which he works even one day; and when he is paid “on a weekly basis.” Or, one might say that an employee is paid on “a salary basis,” within the regulation’s meaning, when he gets what ordinary people think of as a salary. And contra the dissent, the regulation’s “all or part” reference says nothing different. That term makes clear that a worker can be paid on a salary basis even if he additionally gets non-salary compensation, like a bonus. But the employee still must be paid a salary. And Hewitt was not. He received a high day rate (higher than lots of salaries); but he did not get a salary (of $963 or any other amount) because his weekly take-home pay could be as little as $963 or as much as $13,482, depending on how many days he worked.

And if all that leaves the tiniest doubt—well, still we are not done. The next part of this opinion, concerning regulatory structure, confirms all we have said about §602(a)’s meaning. We do not know why the dissent calls that analysis an “alternative rationale.” It is simply a structural argument in support of a more narrowly focused textual one. Here, text and structure go together in refuting the dissent’s view. The broader regulatory structure—in particular, the role of §604(b)—confirms our reading of §602(a). Recall that §604(b) lays out a second path—apart from §602(a)—enabling a compensation scheme to meet the salary-basis requirement. See supra, at 4–5. And that second route is all about daily, hourly, or shift rates. Whereas §602(a) addresses payments on “a weekly[] or less frequent basis,” §604(b) concerns payments “on an hourly, a daily or a shift basis.” An employee’s earnings, §604(b) provides, “may be computed on” those shorter bases without “violating the salary basis requirement” so long as an employer “also” provides a guarantee of weekly payment approximating what