Service
Contract Act
Title 29, Code of Federal Regulations,
Part 4
Labor Standards for Federal Service Contracts
(29 CFR 4.165-4.166)
29 CFR 4.165 - Wage payments
and fringe benefits--in general.
(a)(1) Monetary wages specified
under the Act shall be paid to the
employees to whom they are due promptly and in no event later than one
pay period following the end of the pay period in which they are earned.
No deduction, rebate, or refund is permitted, except as hereinafter
stated. The same rules apply to cash payments authorized to be paid
with the statutory monetary wages as equivalents of determined fringe
benefits (see Sec. 4.177).
(2) The Act makes no distinction,
with respect to its compensation
provisions, between temporary, part-time, and full-time employees, and
the wage and fringe benefit determinations apply, in the absence of
an
express limitation, equally to all such service employees engaged in
work subject to the Act's provisions. (See Sec. 4.176 regarding fringe
benefit payments to temporary and part-time employees.)
(b) The Act does not prescribe
the length of the pay period. However, for purposes of administration
of the Act, and to conform with
practices required under other statutes that may be applicable to the
employment, wages and hours worked must be calculated on the basis of
a fixed and regularly recurring workweek of seven consecutive 24-hour
workday periods, and the records must be kept on this basis. It is
appropriate to use this workweek for the pay period. A bi-weekly or
semimonthly, pay period may, however, be used if advance notification
is given to the affected employees. A pay period longer than semimonthly
is not recognized as appropriate for service employees and wage payments
at greater intervals will not be considered as constituting proper payments
in compliance with the Act.
(c) The prevailing rate established
by a wage determination under
the Act is a minimum rate. A contractor is not precluded from paying
wage rates in excess of those determined to be prevailing in the particular
locality. Nor does the Act affect or require the changing of any provisions
of union contracts specifying higher monetary wages or fringe benefits
than those contained in an applicable determination.
However,
if an applicable wage determination contains a wage or fringe benefit
provision for a class of service employees which is higher than that
specified in an existing union agreement, the determination's provision
must be observed for any work performed on a contract subject to that
determination.
29 CFR 4.166 - Wage payments--unit
of payment.
The standard by which monetary
wage payments are measured under the Act is the wage rate per hour.
An hourly wage rate is not, however, the only unit for payment of wages
that may be used for employees subject to the Act. Employees may be
paid on a daily, weekly, or other time basis, or by piece or task rates,
so long as the measure of work and compensation used, when translated
or reduced by computation to an hourly basis each workweek, will provide
a rate per hour that will
fulfill the statutory requirement. Whatever system of payment is used,
however, must ensure that each hour of work in performance of the
contract is compensated at not less than the required minimum rate.
Failure to pay for certain hours at the required rate cannot be
transformed into compliance with the Act by reallocating portions of
payments made for other hours which are in excess of the specified
minimum.