Highly paid oil rig worker merits overtime, U.S. Supreme Court says

An oil rig supervisor who earned more than $200,000 a year working for Houston-based Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc is entitled to overtime pay, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in a decision with costly implications for the oil and gas industry. The court in a 6-3 decision authored by liberal Justice Elena Kagan decided that because the rig supervisor, Michael Hewitt, was paid a daily rate of $963 and not a salary, an overtime pay exemption in federal wage law for highly paid workers did not apply to him. The justices affirmed a 2021 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Helix must face Hewitt’s 2017 lawsuit seeking overtime pay.

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