Graveyard Shift Workers & Daylight Saving Time

Not long after Halloween festivities end this weekend, so will Daylight Saving Time. Clocks will fall back one hour from 2:00 am to 1:00 am on Sunday, November 2, resulting in an extra hour of sleep! For most of us, the biggest concern is remembering to change our clocks, but for employers with graveyard shifts, Daylight Saving Time can cause confusion regarding work hours and proper payment.

Pay Required for All Hours Worked

A common, eight-hour graveyard shift starts at 11:00 pm and ends at 7:30 am the next day (accounting for a 30-minute meal period). If an employer keeps this same graveyard shift when Daylight Saving Time ends, employees will end up working nine hours for that shift. Make sure your employees’ wage statements reflect the correct number of hours worked and that they are paid accordingly. Depending on your timekeeping system, you may be able to make this adjustment automatically. If your system cannot automatically account for the extra hour, you’ll need to make manual corrections.

Overtime Implications

Employers should also consider if the change will impact overtime. In California, employers need to consider whether the additional hour will result in daily, weekly, or seventh-day overtime.

Workday

Daily overtime is owed when an employee exceeds eight hours in a workday, as defined by the employer. A ninth hour of work in a workday due to the end of Daylight Saving Time would need to be paid out at time and a half. Be sure to check your employee handbook to see how you define your workday.

• In our example, if an employee works 11:00 pm Saturday to 7:30 am Sunday (and the employer defines the workday to begin at 11:00 pm and end at 10:59 pm the next day), the additional hour worked due to the end of Daylight Saving Time would result in nine hours in one workday and trigger California’s daily overtime rule.
• On the other hand, if the employer’s workday definition follows the calendar day (i.e., begins at 12:01 am and ends at 12:00 am, 24 hours later), then the graveyard shift is split with one hour in the first workday and eight hours in the second workday. If the employee does not return to work until Monday, no daily overtime would be incurred for the Saturday to Sunday graveyard shift.
  • However, if the employee returns at 11:00 pm Sunday to do another graveyard shift, then there would be nine hours worked—and daily overtime—on Sunday.

Workweek

You should also check your employee handbook to see how you define your workweek, for example, Sunday to Saturday. That extra hour due to Daylight Saving Time may result in 41 hours for the workweek. Overtime is owed at time and a half for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.

Overtime is also owed for work on the seventh consecutive day of a workweek: hours up to eight are paid at time and a half, and hours over 12 are paid at double time. Depending on your definitions of a workday and a workweek, the end of Daylight Saving Time could also result in unintended additional seventh-day overtime.

What if the additional hour seems to be triggering more than one of these overtime rules? Note that the overtime rules do not allow for “pyramiding.” This means that once an hour worked is paid at the applicable daily overtime rate (time and a half or double time), you are not required to pay weekly overtime for that same hour.

Options

Employers may consider the following options:

• Keep the shift times the same and make sure employees are paid for the extra hour of work, including any overtime as applicable. (Review how your company defines workday and workweek in your handbook.)
• Schedule employees to start later on Saturday or leave earlier on Sunday to ensure they still work their normal number of hours (e.g., 8 hours).