regular rate
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 316 U.S. 572 - Overnight Motor Transportation Co. v. Missel · 1942Most cited · 1,935 citing opinions
FLSA, fluctuating weekly hours · construing 29 U.S.C. § 201 · Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
It is this quotient which is the 'regular rate at which an employee is employed' under contracts of the types described and applied in this paragraph for fixed weekly compensation for hours, certain or variable.
How the Supreme Court has restated “regular rate”
Each Supreme Court definition of “regular rate,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “regular rate”
Court decisions citing the 5 opinions that defined “regular rate” — 3,921 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 5 definitions, chronological · 1942–1947
While the words 'regular rate' are not defined in the Act, they obviously mean the hourly rate actually paid for the normal, non-overtime workweek.
the regular rate refers to the hourly rate actually paid the employee for the normal, non-overtime workweek for which he is employed... The regular rate by its very nature must reflect all payments which the parties have agreed shall be received regularly during the workweek, exclusive of overtime payments. It is not an arbitrary label chosen by the parties; it is an actual fact. Once the parties have decided upon the amount of wages and the mode of payment the determination of the regular rate becomes a matter of mathematical computation, the result of which is unaffected by any designation of a contrary 'regular rate' in the wage contracts.
Fair Labor Standards Act · construing 29 U.S.C. § 201 · Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
we look not to contract nomenclature but to the actual payments, exclusive of those paid for overtime, which the parties have agreed shall be paid during each workweek
piece work with incentive bonus
the words 'regular rate,' while not expressly defined in the statute, '* * * mean the hourly rate actually paid for the normal, non-overtime workweek.' The regular rate is thus an 'actual fact,' and in testing the validity of a wage agreement under the Act the courts are required to look beyond that which the parties have purported to do.