Day Rate Jobs

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay their workers overtime when working over 40 hours in a week. Unfortunately many companies try and skirt this requirement by paying their employees a day rate. A day rate pay is a flat sum amount a worker receives for their days work regardless of the amount of hours they work in a day. If a day rate worker is working over forty hours in one week and is not receiving overtime pay, their employer may be willfully denying them their hard earned wages.

Day rates are the form of payment usually used for jobs in the oil and gas industry, staffing companies and offshore construction companies. Employees in these fields tend to have job projects that have them working long hours for weeks on end until the project is complete. These companies in turn have a tendency of using day rates to avoid tracking their workers hours and paying them their overtime.

Some common day rate worker positions affected by unpaid overtime include:

• Field Specialists
• Field Operators
• Pipeline Inspectors
• Top Drive Technicians
• Service Supervisors
• Field Coordinators
• Tool Pushers
• Pumpers
• Lease Operators
• Mud loggers / Mud Engineers
• Field Engineers
• Water Truck Drivers.

By denying day rate workers their overtime pay when working over 40 hours a week, an employer saves a substantial amount while depriving its employees tens of thousands of dollars in hard-earned wages. It is in the best interest of day-rate employees working long hours to contact an employment attorney to ensure they are not being deprived of the overtime pay they are entitled to.