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Understanding And Complying With New York’s Spread Of Hours Pay Rules

Two business executives discussing spread of hours pay for New York employees working in multiple districts.

New York employers are subject to a number of state and local labor laws and regulations. As a state that boasts multiple bustling economies across several active metro areas, New York has a robust legal and regulatory framework for handling a wide variety of business concerns – including those arising from employment and an employee’s right to fair treatment on the job. The state’s spread of hours pay rules, intended to ensure that hard-working New Yorkers receive additional compensation for work schedules that impose additional inconveniences, can be especially difficult to navigate for employers who are expanding their workforce and therefore their staff scheduling requirements, or those who are maintaining operations in areas of the state with differing minimum wage requirements. A conversation with a business law attorney from Schwab & Gasparini may help you to identify the factors most pertinent to your business. Call us without hesitation at any of our New York State locations and reach us in White Plains and Hudson Valley at (914) 304-4353, in Syracuse at (315) 422-1333, or in the state capital at (518) 591-4664.

Federal vs. State and Local Rules

Federal wage and hour rules, overseen by the United States Department of Labor (DOL), generally focus on total hours worked within a predefined workweek, with a view toward determining whether an employer is obligated to pay a particular employee overtime wages. These overtime wages are calculated as (at a minimum) one and a half times the employee’s regular rate of pay. If an employee covered by the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) works more than 40 hours within any given work week (which may or may not conform precisely to a pay period), then that employee must be compensated at the overtime rate for each hour worked past the 40th within that workweek.

While important, these federal protections provide a limited metric by which to account for the actual burden placed on employees by their work schedules. Working 40 hours within a three-day period is a very different proposition from working 40 hours over the course of five or more working days – regardless of whether those 40 hours all fall within a designated workweek under the FLSA definition. Consequently, some state and local governments set their own rules to supplement the DOL guidelines by addressing not just the total hours worked within an employee’s designated workweek, but the way those hours are distributed – the “spread of hours” – within that time.

What Does “Spread of Hours” Mean?

In the context of New York’s state labor laws, “spread of hours” is commonly used in reference to two main “trigger” conditions, both of which relate to an employee’s right to compensation in light of scheduling demands that state legislators have recognized to be especially onerous. New York’s spread of hours pay rules may apply when either of the following is true:

Split shift: An employee’s hours for a single working day are split so that the hours worked do not form a single consecutive shift
Long shift: An employee’s shift extends for more than 10 consecutive hours

Either condition, if applicable, may entitle an employee to an extra hour of pay at the New York minimum wage rate.

As New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) points out, minimum wage rules in New York can vary by industry. In addition, the New York Department of Labor (NYDOL) explains that the state sets the regulatory minimum wage differently by region within the state. The jurisdiction controlling minimum wage is determined by where the employee performs their work, rather than where the employer’s office is located. The complexity of all the factors involved in minimum wage calculations may make it difficult for some businesses to ensure that they are in full compliance with New York State’s labor laws. An experienced New York business and employment law attorney with Schwab & Gasparini may be able to provide guidance to help you avoid regulatory transgressions.

Is Spread of Hours Pay for Extended Shifts the Same as Overtime?

Minimum requirements for overtime wages are set by the FLSA, and compliance with these federal overtime pay regulations generally falls under the oversight of the federal, rather than state, Department of Labor. The computation of hours worked, for purposes of federal wage and hour compliance, is similarly controlled by criteria set out in the FLSA. Whether and how to develop pay rules with respect to spread of hours in an employee’s schedule, however, is left up to the states, with New York applying the two-pronged rule given above. The theory of labor law underpinning spread of hours rules is not totally unrelated to the jurisprudence informing federal wage and hour regulations, but the two types of requirements operate differently – not just in their state vs. federal oversight, but in terms of their practical impact on shift scheduling and employee compensation.

Calculating Hours Worked: Federal Overtime vs. New York Spread of Hours

The FLSA and the United States Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division define a workweek as a recurring cycle of seven consecutive days, or 168 hours within a seven-day period. This workweek is set per employee, so it is not necessary for all employees within an organization to start and end their individual workweeks on the same day of the calendar week. Each individual employee’s workweek, however, should be a stable and predictable schedule that repeats after every seventh day. Whenever an employee who is not exempt from FLSA overtime pay requirements works more than 40 hours within his or her established workweek, that employee must be compensated at a minimum rate of one and a half times his or her usual hourly rate – regardless of the number of hours the employee works on any particular day within that period.

New York’s spread of hours pay rules, on the other hand, are concerned primarily with the way an employee’s working hours are scheduled across a single given day. “Splitting” a shift risks breaking an employee’s hours into sets between which he or she is not getting paid, but also will not have sufficient time between shifts to commute to another location or take on additional work at another job. Similarly, scheduling a single employee for more than 10 consecutive hours has a significant impact on his or her opportunities to take care of ordinary tasks before or after work. Either circumstance can result in a prolonged day that is dominated by work to an extent that would be unlikely to occur in a “standard” eight-hour schedule. “Spread of hour” rules are designed to account for this type of increase in burden relative to compensation, so the rules may apply even if the employee’s total hours within his or her designated workweek fall well below the threshold for overtime calculations.

Calculating Compensation Owed: Overtime Wage Computations vs. Spread of Hours Pay

States do have the option to set overtime pay standards that are more stringent than their federal counterparts – but although New York’s regionally variable minimum wages throughout the state are higher than the federally mandated hourly minimum, the state legislature has not applied any similar enhancements to the federal requirements that overtime pay be calculated at, minimally, one and a half times the individual employee’s regular hourly rate (note that if the employee is typically paid at the New York minimum wage, then his or her overtime pay must be at least one and a half times that rate, not one and a half times the federal minimum). New York employers may wish to note, however, that the pay to which an employee is entitled under the state’s spread of hours rules is the equivalent of an hour’s pay at the minimum wage in the jurisdiction where the employee works – unlike federal overtime wage computations, spread of hours pay is unaffected by the employee’s usual hourly rate of pay.

Learn More From a New York Business Law Attorney

Maintaining employer compliance with New York State’s spread of hours pay rules can be more challenging than it may at first appear. Due to the complexity of the state’s minimum wage laws, even determining the rate that will apply when an employee’s work schedule triggers a spread of hours pay scenario can sometimes become a complicated undertaking, particularly for employers who maintain offices or job sites at more than one location throughout the state. Fortunately, the business law attorneys at Schwab & Gasparini have offices at multiple New York State locations as well, and we welcome your questions about New York’s spread of hours pay rules when you call our offices in Albany at (518) 591-4664, in White Plains or Hudson Valley at (914) 304-4353, or in Syracuse at (315) 422-1333.

Mon Feb 24 2025, 12:00am