Method To Determine Overtime Compensation Due Hostages in Iran

State Department personnel had questions regarding the amount of overtime pay due the employees held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. When the takeover occurred, the embassy workforce had been reduced to a skeleton crew which worked more overtime than did personnel at other U.S. embassies. Although Federal law sets forth the general principles of paying overtime for missing persons, a status which included the hostages, previous GAO decisions regarding the principles did not seem to apply to the hostages' situation. In general, overtime that is not part of an employee's regularly scheduled workweek is considered to be a temporary allowance. In such cases, employee entitlements to overtime while interned are based on the overtime earned by replacements or similarly situated persons. However, GAO held that, since the entire embassy was taken over and since the overtime rules applied in other cases were not a reasonable guide in this situation, the State Department should determine what would have transpired at the embassy had it not been seized. If it is determined that the skeleton force would have continued to exist, averaging the same amount of overtime that had been worked for the pay periods immediately before the takeover of the embassy, then the employees' entitlements can be computed on that basis.