Work Hours and Overtime
You can work for five hours without a break. After five hours, your employer has to give you a break of 30 minutes.
Unless you have an averaging agreement with your employer, your employer must pay you overtime after eight hours of work in one day, or more than 40 regular hours in one week.
Under an averaging agreement, you and your employer can enter into a written agreement that allows your employer to schedule your time in a way that better meets the employer’s needs. Under an averaging agreement, your right to overtime may be reduced or eliminated.
Averaging agreements can be complicated. You can find help by contacting the Employment Standards Branch. To use a simple example: You usually work 40 hours a week, on average. Under a one-week averaging agreement, your employer could schedule you to work for 10 hours a day for the four busiest days of work. In this case, your 40-hour, five-day work week has been “averaged” to fit into four days of 10 hours each. No overtime is paid for the 10-hour days.
Under the law, there are rules that govern averaging agreements. For more information, contact the Employment Standards Branch.
Overtime Pay
Your employer must pay you overtime:
- when you have no averaging agreement with your employer: your employer asks you to work more than eight hours in a day or more than 40 hours in a week,
or
- when you have an averaging agreement with your employer: your employer asks you to work more hours in a day than you agreed to in your averaging agreement.
The amount of overtime pay you get depends on the number of extra hours you work. You must be paid overtime after eight hours of work in one day.
Your employer must pay you one and one-half times your regular pay for each hour you work after eight hours. This is called time and a half. Your employer must pay you two times your regular pay for each hour you work after 12 hours. This is called double time.