When Camborne’s legislature passed its overtime pay statute a decade ago, the operative clause guaranteed premium pay to workers for hours beyond those “regularly scheduled.” Nobody in the drafting session, according to committee transcripts, spent much time on what “regularly scheduled” would mean for a worker whose hours changed every week.
That question landed in Camborne Superior Court this spring, in a case brought by warehouse workers at a Brackwell distribution centre whose weekly schedules varied by employer design, never repeating two weeks running.
The employer argued that without a fixed baseline schedule, no hours could be “beyond” it, meaning overtime protections did not apply. Workers argued the opposite: that a schedule set weekly by the employer was still a schedule, and hours added on top of it still counted as regular under any reasonable reading.
Judge Corinne Adebayo sided with the workers, ruling that “regularly scheduled” refers to whatever schedule an employer sets for a given week, not a fixed pattern repeated over time. Her written opinion noted that the statute’s legislative history offered no guidance either way. Lawmakers, she wrote, had left the phrase’s meaning to litigation rather than deciding it themselves.
“Two words did a lot of work in this case,” said employment lawyer Selassie Boaten, who was not involved but has followed the case closely. “The legislature could have defined ‘regularly scheduled’ in a single sentence. Instead it took a court and a year of litigation to get an answer.”
The Camborne Assembly’s labour committee has not indicated plans to amend the statute to codify the ruling. The distribution centre’s operator has filed an appeal.
