Page:Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt.pdf/22

18 they are “bona fide executive[s]”); but so too, it establishes when those workers are covered (because they are not). In thus carving up the class of higher-income workers, the salary-basis requirement is hardly unique. Another provision of the HCE rule states, for example, that various workers in “maintenance, construction and similar occupations” are never exempt as executives, “no matter how highly paid they might be.” §541.601(d). Throughout, the HCE rule reflects the statutory choice not to set a simple income level as the test for exemption. Some might have made a different choice, but that cannot affect what this Court decides.

Nor do Helix’s operational and cost-based objections move the needle. Helix could come into compliance with the salary-basis requirement for Hewitt and similar employees in either of two ways. It could add to Hewitt’s per-day rate a weekly guarantee that satisfies §604(b)’s conditions. Or it could convert Hewitt’s compensation to a straight weekly salary for time he spends on the rig. Helix protests that either option would make it pay for days Hewitt has not worked. See Reply Brief 25–26. But that is just to say that Helix wishes neither to pay employees a true salary nor to pay them overtime. And the whole point of the salary-basis requirement is to take that third option off the table, even though doing so may well increase costs. Of course, were that requirement novel, Helix’s complaint about retroactive liability could have force. See Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., 567 U. S. 142, 155–157 (2012). But as described above, the salary-basis test, in largely the form it exists today, goes back to nearly the FLSA’s beginnings. See supra, at 2–3, 9. And the governing regulations—both §602(a) and §604(b)—make clear what that test means for a daily-rate worker like Hewitt: Because he is not paid on a salary basis, he is entitled to overtime compensation. So as the Court of Appeals remarked, nothing about today’s decision should “come as a surprise.” 15 F. 4th, at 296.