Page:Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt.pdf/8

4 duties standard” and thus leads to more exemptions). But the salary-basis and salary-level tests carry over from the general rule to the HCE rule in identical form. The HCE rule too states that an employee can count as an executive (and thus lose the FLSA’s protections) only if he receives “at least $455 per week paid on a salary … basis.” §541.601(b)(1).

Two other regulations give content to the salary-basis test at the heart of this case. (After giving full citations, we refer to them simply as §602(a) and §604(b).) The main salary-basis provision, set out in two sentences of §541.602(a), states: "“An employee will be considered to be paid on a ‘salary basis’ … if the employee regularly receives each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent basis, a predetermined amount constituting all or part of the employee’s compensation, which amount is not subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work performed. Subject to [certain exceptions], an exempt employee must receive the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work without regard to the number of days or hours worked.”"

The rule thus ensures that the employee will get at least part of his compensation through a preset weekly (or less frequent) salary, not subject to reduction because of exactly how many days he worked. If, as the rule’s second sentence drives home, an employee works any part of a week, he must receive his “full salary for [that] week”—or else he is not paid on a salary basis and cannot qualify as a bona fide executive. Ibid.

Another provision, §541.604(b), focuses on workers whose compensation is “computed on an hourly, a daily or a shift basis,” rather than a weekly or less frequent one. That section states that an employer may base an employee’s pay on an hourly, daily, or shift rate without “violating the salary