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Maryland Overtime Laws



Understanding the Maryland Overtime Laws

It’s important to have a good understanding of those MD overtime laws, because you just might have to deal with overtime pay, especially if the employer hasn’t paid any.

The Lowdown on Maryland Overtime Laws: the Hourly Rate

The basis behind MD overtime laws is that every hour worked past 40 hours in a workweek is entitled to overtime pay.

What is overtime pay? First off, let’s deal with an ‘hourly rate.’ Here are a couple things to consider:

1. Overtime Pay Is  1 ½ Times the Regular Rate of Pay
2. Example: Employee Gets Paid $7/hour, Works 50 Hours in One Week….

That would be an extra ten hours of work in that week. Simply multiply 7 with 1 ½, and that’s the overtime pay. It should be $10.50 per hour. Take that new rate and multiply that with 10 hours, and that should be the overtime pay for that week.

It should be an extra $105 into the paycheck for the week. That’s how MD overtime laws are applied.

Maryland Overtime Laws: What About a ‘Piece’ Rate?

Yes, even Maryland overtime laws would cover this type of wage.

A ‘piece’ rate is essentially a per-product wage, rather than a per-hour wage. In other words, if you worked in manufacturing and produced 50 bottles of perfume a day at a rate of $7 per bottle, you’d make $350/day.

Maryland overtime laws, though, have an easy formula to apply.

The MD overtime laws application on piecework can be determined by simply dividing the total weekly earnings with the total number of hours worked. You have to keep in mind that it’s all about hours here. Not hourly wage. At least in this case.

So for example: if a worker produced those 50 bottles a day at $7 per bottle – but had to work 55 hours in one week at that rate – simply dividing the total earnings for the week (which would be $1,750) by the number 55 would give you the ‘hourly rate.’ Roughly, that would be $31.81 an hour.

Since the worker worked an additional 15 hours of overtime, you take half of $31.81 (which would be roughly $15.90) and multiply that amount with 15 for the overtime pay.

The result would be an additional $238.50 on top of the standard paycheck for that month.

What About Salary Under MD Overtime Laws?

Typically, salaried employees don’t apply to the Maryland overtime law. There are, however, some exceptions in regards to the Maryland overtime law….

There are cases where the Maryland overtime law applies when an employee works well beyond that 40-hour workweek.

Let’s give an example of how the Maryland overtime law would apply: let’s say that an employer pays an employee $600 a week regardless of hours. It’s a salary. What happens when the employee is then required to work beyond those standard 40 hours? It becomes an overtime issue handled by the Maryland overtime law.

What then happens is you take, say, a 60-hour workweek for this particular issue and divide the number 600 with it. You end up with the number 10. That’s the ‘hourly rate’ for that particular week.

An employee can pursue overtime pay in that respect by taking half of that rate – which would be $5 – multiplying that with the number of overtime hours (which is 20).

The answer would be $100. That would be the overtime pay allowed under law for a $600/week salary.

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