labor lawAdivision of labor law center

The federal government allows each state to determine whether or not they want special overtime laws for local businesses. Each state can determine what makes up a legal workday, or how many hours are in a standard work week. And each state can also decide if and when there are exceptions to its overtime laws. Not Delaware.

The First State has no set of laws that decide if and when so-called premium pay is warranted for work over a set amount of hours per day or week for small and local businesses. Delaware instead defers to the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the FLSA.

The FLSA is the federal guideline that tells us what the basic overtime pay rules are for employers, technically with interstate businesses, and the law also goes into a whole set of provisions and exemptions that we could cover in detail in a future blog when we have the chance.

In the meantime, we should touch upon the very basic rules outlined in the Fair Labor Standards Act. The most important of all possibly is the one that declares that the standard workday consists of 8 hours per day, and the standard work week is made up of 40 hours. If an employer expects an employee to work more than that amount of time, then they will have to pay that premium wage rate that we talked about before—at least one and a half times the employee’s typical wage rate.

That being said, what we can’t forget is that Delaware does have some employment laws that indirectly touch upon overtime labor rules. One of them is the Delaware Wage Payment and Collection Act. It basically tells us that it will enforce the fact that the employer has to pay the employee the rate it promised for all of the employee’s hours worked. How does this work with overtime? Well, if the employee worked over 40 hours in a week, and the employer promised to pay time and a half in that case, the employer better pay up. Otherwise, the employee can file with the state.

The Delaware Complete Labor Law poster reflects all of the FLSA laws as well as all the state specific laws.

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