When are employers required to pay double time?
Wisconsin Dept. of Workforce Development is the resource for labor standards along with wage and leave questions in Wisconsin. DWD general guidance is quoted below. Each fact pattern would require a separate legal analysis of all facts and applicable law by the DWD or attorney you hire.
Employers can set the hours and days of work, they wish their employees to work. In factories and mercantile establishments, Wisconsin sets limits in which employees must have one day of rest somewhere in a seven-day workweek, by the "One Day of Rest in Seven" law. This law also exempts certain specific employments from coverage. The department can explain to you which jobs are exempted. The law provides that all employees in those covered establishments must be given 24 consecutive hours of rest in each calendar week. However, the law does not provide that the rest must be given every 7 days. For example, an employer may legally schedule work for 12 consecutive days within a two-week period if the days of rest fall on the first and last days of the two-week period. An employer is permitted, upon joint request of its employees, to ask the Department to waive provision of the One Day of Rest in Seven Law in unusual circumstances. If the Department grants such a waiver, the employer can ask employees if they wish to volunteer to work without
Each employer subject to Wisconsin's overtime regulations must pay to each covered employee 1 1/2 times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week. "Week" means a calendar week or a regular reoccurring period of 168 hours in the form of seven consecutive 24- hour periods. Adults may work an unlimited number of hours per day and per week, as the law sets no limits. The employer has the legal right to set the schedule of hours to be worked and the employee does not have the right to refuse to work unless otherwise negotiated in a collectively bargained agreement.