Overtime on Certified Payroll: The Rate, the Base and the Hours

David Gul · Last updated September 18, 2026

On a federal construction contract over $100,000, the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act requires laborers and mechanics to be paid at least one and one-half times their basic rate of pay for all hours over 40 in the workweek. The base for that premium is the basic hourly rate in the wage determination, or the rate actually paid if higher, and it excludes fringe benefits and cash paid in lieu of them. There is no daily overtime under the federal rule; a ten-hour day with a 40-hour week is straight time on Form WH-347. Fringe is still owed on every overtime hour, at the straight fringe rate.

Which hours

Overtime under CWHSSA is weekly: hours over 40 in the contractor’s workweek. Daily overtime under the Act was repealed at the start of 1986, so any premium for a long day, for Saturdays or Sundays, or for holidays is a matter of state law, a collective bargaining agreement or the contractor’s own policy, not the federal certified payroll rule. The clause at 29 CFR 5.5(b) puts it as: no laborer or mechanic shall be required or permitted to work more than forty hours in any workweek unless paid not less than one and one-half times the basic rate of pay for all hours over forty.

Only hours on covered work count toward the CWHSSA threshold. A worker with 30 hours on the federal job and 20 on a private one has 10 hours of overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which applies to the whole week, but none under CWHSSA, and the certified payroll for the federal job shows 30 straight-time hours. The FLSA overtime is still owed; it is just not a Davis-Bacon matter.

Which rate

The Federal Acquisition Regulation states the base in one sentence, at 48 CFR 22.406-2(c): overtime is computed on the basic hourly rate of pay in the wage determination, or the basic hourly rate actually paid by the contractor if higher. The basic rate includes employee contributions to fringe benefits but excludes the contractor’s contributions, costs, or cash equivalents for fringe benefits, and overtime shall not be computed on a rate lower than the basic hourly rate in the wage determination.

Determination	Paid	Overtime base	Overtime rate	Fringe on OT hours
22.50 basic, 8.10 fringe	22.50 cash, 8.10 cash in lieu	22.50	33.75	8.10 per hour, not multiplied
22.50 basic, 8.10 fringe	24.00 cash, 8.10 to a plan	24.00 (the higher actual rate)	36.00	8.10 per hour to the plan
22.50 basic, 8.10 fringe	30.60 all cash, no fringe stated	22.50 at least; higher if the 30.60 is all wage	33.75 or 45.90, depending on how the pay is structured	owed either way

The third row is the trap in paying everything as one cash rate. If the 30.60 is a wage with no fringe component, the overtime base is 30.60. A contractor who wants the base to be 22.50 has to pay and record the 8.10 as cash in lieu of fringe, separately, in advance of the work, not decide afterwards.

The arithmetic on a line

A carpenter at a 32.20 basic rate with 12.40 cash in lieu works 44 hours: 40 straight time, 4 overtime.

• Straight time: 40 hours at 32.20 = 1,288.00
• Overtime: 4 hours at 48.30 (32.20 times 1.5) = 193.20
• Cash in lieu of fringe: 44 hours at 12.40 = 545.60, on every hour, at the straight rate
• Gross for the project: 2,026.80

On Form WH-347 the 40 and the 4 sit on the ST and OT rows of column 4, column 5 totals them, 6A shows 32.20 above 48.30, 6C shows 545.60, and 7A shows 2,026.80.

Two classifications in one week

The 40-hour threshold is per worker, not per classification. A worker with 24 hours of carpentry and 20 hours of labor has 4 overtime hours, and they are paid at time and a half of the rate for the work being done in those hours, which is normally the hours at the end of the week. Both lines are on the payroll, and the overtime appears on whichever line the hours over 40 fall.

More in this series: Prevailing Wage and Fringe Benefits on Certified Payroll · The Mistakes That Get a Certified Payroll Rejected · All certified payroll guides