A project manager sends one line back on your T&M invoice: "Why is Thursday billed at time and a half?"
You know why. Four electricians stayed until 9 to terminate and megger-test the feeders so the AHJ could energize Friday morning.
The charge was fair. The explanation was missing.
Construction overtime laws for electrical contractors settle only half of that conversation. The law tells you what you owe the worker. It says nothing about what the customer will pay you.
Both halves get answered by the same piece of paper: a dated, job-tagged record of who was there, for what hours, doing what. This post covers the math, the rules, the records, and the wording.
This is general information, not legal advice. Wage and hour rules change and state rules vary. Verify against your state labor department and your CBA before you change how you pay anyone.What Federal Law Actually Requires on an Electrical Crew
Non-exempt employees get 1.5 times their regular rate for every hour over 40 in a workweek. That is the floor, and almost every field electrician is under it.
The workweek is a fixed, regularly recurring 168-hour period. You pick when it starts, you write it down, and you apply it consistently — you cannot average a 50-hour week against a 30-hour week.
There is no construction exemption. There is no exemption for skilled trades, for per-diem workers, or for a guy who "agreed" to straight time.
The Salaried Foreman Question
A salaried foreman is only exempt if he clears both a salary test and a duties test. Salary alone never does it.
After the 2024 rule was vacated in federal court, the Department of Labor formally restored the 2019 thresholds in May 2026. The current figures:
| Test | Current threshold |
|---|
| Standard EAP salary basis | $684 per week ($35,568 per year) |
| Highly compensated employee | $107,432 total annual compensation |
The duties test is the harder one. A working foreman who pulls wire, bends pipe, and terminates gear most of the day — and supervises around the edges — generally does not meet the executive duties test, no matter what his salary is.
If his primary duty is the electrical work rather than managing two or more full-time employees, treat him as non-exempt and pay the overtime.
The Regular Rate Is Not the Base Wage
The overtime premium is 1.5 times the regular rate, and the regular rate is nearly always higher than the hourly wage on the check stub. The regular rate is a computed figure, not the number on the pay rate sheet — which is why the premium is often built on the wrong base.
Certain payments have to be folded in before you compute the premium:
| Goes INTO the regular rate | Stays OUT of the regular rate |
|---|
| Non-discretionary bonuses — safety, attendance, completion, callback, production bonuses the crew was told about in advance | Truly discretionary bonuses, decided after the fact with no promise |
| Shift differential for night work, weekend shutdowns, and outage work | Actual reimbursement for tools, materials, or supplies bought on the company's behalf |
| On-call or standby pay for the service rotation | Per diem that reasonably approximates real travel and lodging expense |
| Per diem or allowances that vary with hours or shifts worked, or that clearly exceed the actual expense | Gifts, paid leave, and premium pay already paid at 1.5x |
Per diem is the trap that catches electrical subs on travel work. If the per diem goes up when the guy works more hours, the Department of Labor treats it as wages in disguise — it belongs in the regular rate.
Only the actual or reasonably approximate expense is excludable. A "per diem" that is really a wage supplement inflates the regular rate and every overtime hour built on it.
Worked Example: A Completion Bonus Landing in an Overtime Week
Example arithmetic — inputs visible. Apprentice paid $24.00/hr, works 50 hours in one workweek, and earns a $200 shutdown-completion bonus promised in advance for that week.| Step | Math | Result |
|---|
| Straight-time wages | 50 hrs × $24.00 | $1,200.00 |
| Add non-discretionary bonus | $1,200.00 + $200.00 | $1,400.00 |
| Regular rate | $1,400.00 ÷ 50 hrs | $28.00/hr |
| Overtime premium owed | 0.5 × $28.00 × 10 OT hrs | $140.00 |
| Premium if computed on base wage only | 0.5 × $24.00 × 10 OT hrs | $120.00 |
The gap is $20.00 for one worker for one week. Run it with your own wage and bonus figures.
If the bonus is paid later — a quarterly safety bonus, a job-completion bonus that clears after closeout — you still have to allocate it back to the workweeks it covers and recompute the premium for any week that had overtime in it. A check written in October does not close July's books.
How Overtime Works When One Electrician Is Paid Two Rates
When a worker is paid at two or more rates in the same workweek, the regular rate is the weighted average of everything he earned that week, divided by all hours worked. Paying 1.5 times whatever rate he happened to be on Friday produces the wrong premium every time the week mixes rates.
A journeyman runs service calls Monday and Tuesday at the service rate, then sits on a commercial fit-out Wednesday through Friday at the contract rate. Or a hand steps up to foreman for two days.
Example arithmetic — inputs visible. One journeyman, one workweek, 48 total hours:| Work | Hours | Rate | Straight-time earnings |
|---|
| Service calls (Mon–Tue) | 18 | $42.00 | $756.00 |
| Commercial fit-out (Wed–Fri) | 30 | $36.00 | $1,080.00 |
| Total | 48 | — | $1,836.00 |
Now the premium:
| Regular rate | $1,836.00 ÷ 48 hrs | $38.25/hr |
| Overtime hours | 48 − 40 | 8 |
| Half-time premium owed | 0.5 × $38.25 × 8 | $153.00 |
| Total gross for the week | $1,836.00 + $153.00 | $1,989.00 |
| Premium if you used the last rate worked | 0.5 × $36.00 × 8 | $144.00 |
Nine dollars short for one worker for one week. Scale it with your own numbers: 10 workers with a split like this for 30 weeks works out to $9.00 × 10 × 30 = $2,700.
There is an alternative under the regulations — you and the employee can agree in advance, in writing, to pay overtime at 1.5 times the rate applicable to the work performed during the overtime hours. That agreement has to exist before the work, not after the timesheet comes in.
The weighted average is the default. If you have not signed anything, use the weighted average.
Daily Overtime and Seventh-Day Rules by State
Four states require overtime before you ever reach 40 hours in a week. If your crews cross state lines, the rule of the state where the work is physically performed generally governs.
| State | Daily / consecutive-day trigger | What to watch |
|---|
Which Hours Count: Travel, Shop Time, and the Supply House Stop
The ordinary commute from home to the first job site is not paid. Travel between job sites during the workday is.
That is the rule in 29 CFR 785.38: travel as part of the principal activity — job site to job site inside the workday — counts as hours worked. A service tech hitting three calls in a day is on the clock for the drives between them.
Where electrical shops get surprised is the errand that converts a commute into work time:
- Shop stop first. If the hand reports to the shop to load material, pick up a truck, or get the day's assignment, the drive from the shop to the job is paid. The home-to-shop leg is not.
- Supply house pickup. Sending someone to grab a panel or a reel of MC on the way in generally starts the workday at the supply house, not at the job. That is also an hour you are paying for that has to land on a job code — on T&M work, paid time with no cost code attached never reaches the invoice, so you absorb it twice.
- Overnight travel. Travel away from home overnight is compensable to the extent it cuts across the worker's normal working hours — including on a Saturday, if his normal hours are 7 to 3:30.
- Shop fabrication. Bench work, rack assembly, and pre-fab are hours worked, and they push a crew past 40 the same as field hours. They also need to be coded to a job or they vanish from your cost data.
- On-call and callbacks. If the CBA or your policy pays a show-up or callback minimum, that pay generally enters the regular rate for the week.
Prevailing Wage: Where the Overtime Premium Sits Relative to Fringe
On Davis-Bacon work, the half-time overtime premium is computed on the base hourly rate. The fringe portion of the wage determination is excluded from the premium base — but fringes are still owed on every hour worked, including overtime hours.
Two errors run in opposite directions, and both are common.
Example arithmetic — inputs visible. Wage determination for the electrician classification: base $34.50/hr, fringe $16.25/hr, paid in cash. Worker puts in 46 hours on the covered job.| Step | Math | Result |
|---|
| Straight time on all hours (base + fringe) | 46 × ($34.50 + $16.25) | $2,334.50 |
| Half-time premium on BASE only | 0.5 × $34.50 × 6 OT hrs | $103.50 |
| Correct total | $2,334.50 + $103.50 | $2,438.00 |
| Error 1 — premium computed on base + fringe | 0.5 × $50.75 × 6 | $152.25 (overpays $48.75) |
| Error 2 — fringe paid on 40 hours only | 6 OT hrs × $16.25 never paid | $97.50 short |
Error 1 costs you money. Error 2 underpays the worker — fringe is owed on the overtime hours; it just does not get multiplied by the premium.
Cash paid in lieu of a fringe contribution is treated the same way — excluded from the half-time premium base. On federally funded contracts, the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act independently requires overtime after 40 hours, so the obligation exists even where a wage determination is silent.
Certified payroll mechanics and WH-347 line-by-line are a separate subject; what matters here is that the hours you report on the certified payroll and the hours you bill have to come out of the same daily record. If the WH-347 shows 46 hours on the covered job and your T&M invoice for the same week shows 44, the two documents do not reconcile — and on a prevailing-wage job, the customer's auditor is already holding both. Line-for-line agreement between the certified payroll and the billed hours is the point.
Union Contracts Beat the Federal Floor
The FLSA is a minimum, not a ceiling. Where a collective bargaining agreement is more generous, the CBA controls.
For a signatory electrical shop that usually means some combination of:
- Overtime after 8 hours in a day rather than 40 in a week
- Double time after 10 or 12 hours, and on Sundays and holidays
- Saturday premium tiers that differ from Sunday
- Show-up pay and callback minimums for service work
- Travel and subsistence terms that may or may not enter the regular rate
The Records the FLSA Actually Requires
The law does not require a particular form. It requires particular contents, and it requires you to keep them.
For every non-exempt worker, the record must include:
| Field | Why it matters on an electrical job |
|---|
| Employee name, address, birth date if under 19, occupation | The occupation entry is what an investigator compares against the work actually performed — "foreman" on the record and wire-pulling in the field is where an exemption dispute starts |
| Time and day the workweek begins | A Sunday-start week and a Monday-start week put a Saturday shutdown in different weeks and change who crosses 40 |
| Hours worked each workday | Daily hours are what a California or Colorado daily-overtime trigger is measured against |
| Total hours worked each workweek | The 40-hour trigger — and the figure that has to agree with the hours you billed on that job that week |
| Basis on which wages are paid ("$36/hr," "day rate") | Where multi-rate weeks are proved or lost |
| Regular hourly rate for any week with overtime | The weighted-average number from the section above |
| Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings | Separates base pay from premium — the two figures a certified-payroll reviewer re-adds to check your half-time math |
| Total overtime earnings for the workweek | Stated separately, this is the figure a customer's reviewer cross-checks against the OT line on your invoice |
| Additions to and deductions from wages | Tool deductions and truck allowances are where an electrical shop's records most often go quiet |
| Total wages paid each pay period; date of payment and period covered | Ties the certified payroll you filed to the check the hand actually received |
Retention: payroll records for at least three years. Records the wage computations are based on — time cards, wage rate tables, work and time schedules — for at least two years (DOL Fact Sheet #21).
Why the Record Protects the Crew and the Company at the Same Time
In Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., the Supreme Court held that when an employer's records are inadequate, an employee only has to show the amount of uncompensated work "as a matter of just and reasonable inference." The burden then shifts to the employer to produce precise evidence or disprove the estimate.
Translated: if your records are thin, the other side's recollection becomes the starting point and you are arguing uphill.
That cuts both ways, which is the part worth telling the crew. The same record that documents the hours is what stops a customer from chiseling the company on work the crew actually performed.
What You Can Bill for Overtime
The overtime you owe your crew and the overtime you can charge your customer are two different numbers governed by two different documents. The FLSA sets the first. Your contract sets the second.
Nobody at the Department of Labor has an opinion about your invoice. Before the crew stays late, three questions have to have answers:
1. Is overtime billable at all under this contract? On a lump-sum job, generally not — you eat it unless the after-hours work is a change in scope. On T&M, check the rate schedule: some list a straight rate only, which means the premium is yours to absorb. Others list an OT bill rate or a premium-time multiplier. 2. Who authorized it, and when? Get the name, the title, and the timestamp in writing before the crew stays. Verbal approval from a super at 2:40 in the afternoon evaporates by the time the invoice hits accounting three weeks later. 3. What does the OT line have to show? Enough that a reviewer who was not on site can reconstruct the charge without calling you.Keep the bill rate and the cost rate structurally separate in whatever system you use. What you pay a journeyman is nobody's business but yours; what you charge for his hour is the customer's business. Mixing the two in one column is how a labor-cost report accidentally shows a customer your margin. If you have not sorted out how your rates flow into job cost, job costing for electricians walks through the setup.
The Overtime Authorization: Wording You Can Copy
Get it before the work, in writing, with the scope named. A text message counts as writing.
Text-message version — send it before the crew stays, and save the reply:Confirming what we discussed: you're asking for 4 electricians tonight, Thu 7/23, approx 5:00p to 10:00p, to terminate and megger-test the feeders to panels 3A and 3B so the AHJ can energize Friday morning. These hours bill at the overtime rate of $___/hr per section ___ of our contract; straight-time hours today bill as normal. Reply "approved" and we'll keep the crew.Form version — one page, keep it in the truck:
OVERTIME / AFTER-HOURS WORK AUTHORIZATION>
Job name / number: ______________________ Date of authorized work: __________
Requested by: ______________________ Company: ____________ Title: __________
Date and time of request: __________>
Scope of after-hours work: _____________________________________________
Reason after-hours work is required: ____________________________________
Crew authorized: ____ workers Estimated window: ____ to ____>
Billing: Overtime hours on this work bill at $______ /hr (or: at the overtime rate in section ____ of the contract). Straight-time hours bill at the contract rate. Additional supervision, equipment, or material billed separately as incurred.>
Authorized by: __________________________ Title: __________ Date/time: __________
Signature: __________________________
That authorization is half the answer. The other half is the record of what actually happened during those hours.
What an Overtime Line Has to Show
Compare the two versions of the same true charge:
| What loses the argument | What ends it |
|---|
The right-hand column is not longer because it is padded. It is longer because it answers the three questions a reviewer would otherwise have to email you: who, when, and why.
That same content, dated and attached to a job, is what satisfies the recordkeeping obligation. One habit, two problems. More on assembling backup a customer will accept in T&M billing best practices.
Getting the Crew to Write the Note
This is the actual obstacle, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone's time. A crew that will not write anything down cannot produce either record.
The constraint is the last thirty seconds of the shift, so the ask has to fit inside them:
Ask one question, at one moment. At clock-out: "What did you work on?" Not a form, not a report — one line. Give them the shape of the answer. Six to twelve words, with a noun and a location. "Pulled and terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing." "Megger-tested feeders, panels 3A/3B." Not "electrical work" and not "worked on the job." Let them reuse yesterday's note. Most days on a big job are a continuation. Copy-forward and edit beats retyping, and it beats a blank field. Tell them what it is for, once. The note is what stops the customer from arguing that the hours were not real. It protects their overtime, not just your invoice. Never let it become a memory exercise. A note written Friday for Tuesday's work is a guess. Written the same day, it is a record.Some shops do this on a paper daily report the foreman turns in with the timesheet. Some use a shared spreadsheet, some a photo of a handwritten tag. Time tracking software like FieldTimesheet asks the question at clock-out so the note attaches to the entry itself — but the method matters far less than whether the note exists the same day it was earned.
If you want a starting point that does not require software, the free timesheet templates include a daily field report and a T&M work authorization you can print today. Broader setup guidance is in the time tracking guide, and the unbilled-hours calculator will run the arithmetic on your own crew size and rate.
The Record That Satisfies Both Readers
One daily record, kept per person per job, covers the recordkeeping obligation and the invoice backup at the same time. It needs seven fields:
- Date and the day of the workweek
- Who — the individual worker, by name
- Job — name or number, so hours land on the right cost code
- Time in and time out, actual, not rounded to the shift
- What was done during that window, in the crew's own words
- Basis of pay — the rate class that applies to those hours
- Authorization reference for any hours outside the normal schedule
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I owe overtime to an electrician paid a day rate or a flat salary?
Almost always yes — a day rate or a salary does not make an electrician exempt on its own. The exemption requires both the salary threshold ($684/week under the restored 2019 regulation) and a duties test that field electrical work does not meet.
For a day-rate worker, the regular rate is total weekly compensation divided by total hours worked, and you owe an additional half-time premium on the hours past 40.
Which job gets charged the overtime premium when one electrician works three jobs in a week?
The FLSA does not say which job carries the overtime premium — that is a cost-accounting decision, not a legal one. Pick one method and apply it consistently.
Two defensible methods: charge the premium to the job whose hours crossed the 40-hour line, or allocate it pro rata across all jobs by hours worked. Method one matches cause; method two avoids one job carrying a premium it did not create.
Is drive time to the job site paid?
The ordinary commute from home to the first job site is not paid, but travel between job sites during the workday is compensable under 29 CFR 785.38.
The line moves if the worker does something for you first — reporting to the shop to load material, picking up a truck, or stopping at the supply house. That errand starts the workday, and everything after it is on the clock.
Can I give comp time instead of paying overtime?
Private-sector employers generally cannot substitute comp time for overtime pay. Comp time in lieu of overtime pay is a public-agency provision under the FLSA; a private electrical contractor owes cash for the overtime hours in the workweek they were worked.
You can manage schedules inside a single workweek to hold hours down. You cannot bank hours from one week and pay them out in the next.
Do I owe overtime to a 1099 subcontractor?
You do not owe overtime to a genuine independent contractor — the risk is that the classification does not hold.
If the person uses your tools, works your schedule, takes direction from your foreman, and works only for you, a wage investigator may treat him as an employee — at which point every unpaid overtime hour becomes a liability. Classification is decided by the working relationship, not by the paperwork.
Does my collective bargaining agreement override federal overtime rules?
The CBA controls where it is more generous, and federal law controls where it is not. You have to satisfy both, so run the calculation twice and pay the higher figure.
Most electrical agreements are more generous than the FLSA on daily overtime, double time, and weekend premiums. That does not relieve you of the federal regular-rate rules for bonuses and multi-rate weeks.
Can I automatically bill overtime hours to the customer at 1.5x?
You can bill overtime at 1.5x only if your contract says so. Your obligation to pay the premium comes from the FLSA; your right to charge for it comes from the rate schedule you signed.
Check whether your T&M exhibit lists an overtime bill rate or a premium multiplier. If it lists a straight rate only, the premium is yours to absorb unless the after-hours work is authorized as a change in scope.
What does a wage investigator ask for first?
A wage investigator asks first for payroll records and the underlying time records for the period under review, plus your written workweek definition and any bonus or per-diem policies.
Records the investigator can read and reconcile shorten the process. Records with gaps invite the Mt. Clemens inference described above, where the worker's reasonable estimate sets the starting number.
The Short Version
Overtime on an electrical job produces two obligations, not one. The FLSA sets what you pay: 1.5x the regular rate — weighted-average across multiple rates, with non-discretionary bonuses and non-qualifying per diem folded in, with fringe excluded from the premium base on Davis-Bacon work, and with daily triggers in California, Alaska, Nevada, and Colorado.
Your contract sets what you can bill: a separate bill rate, authorized in writing before the work, on a line that names who was there, when, and what they accomplished.
The record that satisfies a wage investigator and the record that ends an invoice argument are the same seven fields. Write them once, the same day, and both questions are already answered before anyone asks.
Sources: DOL Fact Sheet #21 — FLSA Recordkeeping · 29 CFR 541.600 — EAP salary level · 29 CFR 541.601 — highly compensated employees · 29 CFR 778.115 — employees working at two or more rates · 29 CFR 5.32 — overtime payments on covered contracts · 29 CFR 785.38 — travel that is all in the day's work · Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946) · Colorado COMPS Order 40 · Alaska Statutes 23.10.060