Article 24
Overtime and Compensatory Time

Section 24.01

Overtime is defined as (a) time worked in excess of eighty (80) hours in an administrative pay period (b) time worked in excess of eight (8) hours (or 9 or 10 hours where 5/4-9 or 4-10 AWS is applicable) in a workday, (c) time worked on a non-work-day, (except for permanent part-time employees), (d) time worked outside of regular hours on a workday. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to require overtime compensation under more than one of the foregoing definitions for a single period of overtime.

Section 24.02

Opportunity for overtime work assignments shall be distributed among the qualified employees in the same classification and assigned to the same duty station as equitably as is practicable.

Suitable records of overtime worked and declined will be maintained by the Employer to assure that each employee received substantially the same consideration. Such records may be reviewed, upon request, by the designated NTEU representative. For the purpose of this record keeping, if the Employer offers an employee overtime, but it is declined, the overtime declined will be counted, hour for hour, as overtime worked. For the purpose of this record keeping, if the Employer offers an employee overtime, and the employee accepts the overtime, the overtime assignments accepted but not worked, without good and sufficient reason, shall be counted, 2 hours for each hour, as overtime worked.

Section 24.03

Extended or regular overtime assignments are not appropriate to permanently correct staffing imbalances.

Section 24.04

A. When the Employer requires employees to work overtime assignments, the Employer will provide as much advance notice to the affected employees as possible.

B. The Employer is responsible for determining which employees will work overtime assignments. However, if management determines that the overtime assignment could be performed just as well by one or more employees, the employee from that group who wishes to do the work and who has the most Federal service will be given the assignment. These provisions will not apply when overtime assignments are frequent. In that case, the assignments will be rotated among the interested employees in the group, or if no one is interested, among all the employees in the group.

Section 24.05

Employees shall earn compensatory time in accordance with applicable rules and regulations. (The Employer will make these regulations available for employee review at its Headquarters servicing personnel operations branch offices.) Employees are limited to carrying over 80 hours of compensatory time from one pay-period to another, except when an exigency is declared by the Employer.

Section 24.06

Employees may elect either to be paid for irregular overtime worked or to be granted compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay, unless they must be paid under FLSA. When the employee's annual and compensatory time leave balance would create a leave scheduling problem, the employee will be paid for the overtime and not given a choice to elect compensatory time.

Section 24.07

Compensatory time earned will be equal to the time spent in overtime work on an hour-for-hour basis. Compensatory time must be used before annual leave. Employees and supervisors will make every effort to ensure that accrued compensatory time is used within 26 pay periods of date earned. However, compensatory time earned, requested and not granted within 26 pay periods of the pay period in which overtime was worked shall be paid as overtime.