Can overtime be counted only on a weekly basis?

Not on the face of the OSH Code. Section 27 says overtime is calculated on a daily basis or a weekly basis, whichever is more favourable to the worker. A worker who does ten hours on Monday has two hours of overtime even if the week totals forty-eight. A payroll that runs only the weekly test will underpay any crew on an uneven roster.

How are part-hours of overtime counted in Tamil Nadu?

Under rule 30(2) of Tamil Nadu's 2022 draft OSH rules, a fraction of an hour between fifteen and thirty minutes counts as thirty minutes, and more than thirty minutes counts as a full hour. A worker who stays twenty minutes to finish a load has earned half an hour of overtime at twice the rate, not nothing.

Who pays overtime arrears when a contractor underpaid?

The contractor owes them as employer, but section 55(3) of the OSH Code makes the principal employer liable for wages a contractor fails to pay, with recovery from the contractor by deduction from amounts due under the contract or as a debt. Paying the crew first and recovering from the contractor's bill is one way sites settle it; the details are for counsel.

How can a site check its contractor's overtime calculation?

Recount a sample of workers from the site's own gate and shift records: daily and weekly, whichever is higher, with part-hours rounded under the rules, and compare the result with the overtime hours on the contractor's register. Then ask which wage components the overtime rate is built on, and track each worker's quarterly total against the cap.

When overtime was only counted by the week

A packaging plant in Tamil Nadu asked us to take over its contract production crew, and to reconcile the last quarter's timesheets as part of the handover. The outgoing contractor had paid overtime only when a worker passed forty-eight hours in a week. On the plant's uneven roster that missed most of it: section 27 of the OSH Code counts daily or weekly, whichever is more favourable to the worker. This is a representative composite; no single client is described.

The situation

~80contract workers on two production shifts [VERIFY: composite figure]

410 hoursovertime paid in the quarter on the weekly-only count [VERIFY: composite figure]

1,290 hoursovertime owed on the daily count with the rounding rule applied [VERIFY: composite figure]

880 hoursunpaid in the quarter [VERIFY: composite figure]

The plant's dispatch ran heavy at the start of each week and light at the end. Its roster followed: ten-hour days on Monday and Tuesday, six on Wednesday and Thursday, eight on Friday and Saturday, forty-eight in all [VERIFY: composite]. The contractor's payroll sheet had a single overtime test, hours above forty-eight in the week, and paid part-hours only when they reached a full hour. Neither was what the rules say.

What the timesheets showed

We recounted every worker's quarter three ways and set the results side by side for the plant's finance head. The plant's own gate and shift records were the source; the contractor's payroll sheet was what we checked them against.

Count	Rule	Overtime hours in the quarter [VERIFY: composite]
Weekly only, whole hours (what was paid)	Contractor's payroll sheet	410
Daily or weekly, whichever is higher	OSH Code s.27; Tamil Nadu draft r.30(1)	1,150
Daily or weekly, with part-hours rounded	Tamil Nadu draft r.30(2): 15 to 30 minutes counts as 30; over 30 as an hour	1,290

The first gap came from the roster: a ten-hour Monday is two hours of overtime even in a forty-eight-hour week. The second came from the shift change. Workers on the dispatch line routinely stayed twenty or forty minutes to finish a load, and the sheet dropped every one of those part-hours; under the rounding rule twenty minutes is half an hour of overtime and forty is a full hour. Nobody went past the 125-hour quarterly cap in the Tamil Nadu draft, but nine workers were above 100 [VERIFY: composite].

What was done

The arrears were quantified on both wage bases. Overtime is twice the rate of wages, and whether that rate includes house rent and conveyance allowances is an open reading of the Code's definition of wages. On the contractor's narrow base of basic and dearness allowance, the 880 hours came to about ₹1,01,500; on the wider base, ₹1,32,000 [VERIFY: composite]. The plant's counsel advised settling on the wider base while the question stays open; that was the plant's decision, not ours.
The plant paid the crew first and recovered later. Section 55(3) of the OSH Code makes a principal employer liable for wages a contractor fails to pay, recoverable by deduction from amounts payable under the contract. The arrears were paid to the workers with the next wage period, and the amount was withheld from the outgoing contractor's final bill [VERIFY: composite].
The payroll test was rebuilt. Our sheet for the crew runs both counts every week, pays the higher, and applies the rounding rule to the minute from the gate records. Overtime is paid with the wage period in which it was worked, as both the Tamil Nadu draft and the Central rules require.
Consent and the cap were put on paper. Section 27 makes overtime subject to the worker's consent; each worker on the dispatch line signed the roster, and a running quarterly total per worker sits on the supervisor's board with a stop at 110 hours [VERIFY: composite].
The roster was changed. Half a crew of extra workers now covers the Monday and Tuesday peak, which costs less than two hours of double time per head across the full crew [VERIFY: composite].

What changed

Measure	Before	The quarter after	Notes
Overtime counting basis	Weekly only	Daily and weekly, higher of the two	OSH Code s.27
Part-hours	Dropped below a full hour	Rounded under the rule	TN draft r.30(2)
Overtime hours paid in the quarter	410	About 620	Fewer hours worked, all of them counted [VERIFY: composite]
Workers above 100 overtime hours	9	0	After the roster change [VERIFY: composite]
Disputes about overtime raised with the plant	Several a month	None in the quarter	Composite [VERIFY]

The lesson for any site with an uneven roster is that a weekly test can look compliant and pay almost nothing: a crew can work two ten-hour days a week for a quarter and never cross forty-eight. The daily count, the rounding rule and the wage base are each a separate check, and a principal employer that only reads the total overtime figure on the contractor's invoice will not see any of them. How arrears are calculated and settled on a site's own facts is a question for its counsel. This composite describes a method, not an outcome.

How Velura Services helps

Velura counts overtime by the day and the week, applies the rounding rule and pays it at the statutory rate in the same wage period. If overtime has been undercounted, we can help work out the arrears from attendance records and fix the method.

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Sources

Figures are a representative composite drawn from our own deployments; no single client is described. Founder to confirm or replace before publish.
Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (Act 37 of 2020), Gazette text hosted by DGFASLI — s.2(1)(zzj) (wages, including the second proviso), s.27 (overtime at twice the rate; daily or weekly, whichever is more favourable; consent), s.55(3) (principal employer's liability for wages the contractor fails to pay). Opened and read.
Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Tamil Nadu) Rules, 2022 (draft), G.O. Ms. No. 38, 11 April 2022 — r.30 (more than eight hours a day or forty-eight a week; rounding of part-hours; payment at the end of each wage period; 125 hours a quarter). Opened and read. Draft only [VERIFY: whether Tamil Nadu's final OSH rules keep these figures].
Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (Central) Rules, 2026, G.S.R. 345(E) dated 8 May 2026 — r.69 (overtime; rounding; payment at the end of each wage period). Opened and read from a mirrored copy of the Gazette [VERIFY: against the e-Gazette original].