(a) Exemption of an employee in any workweek under section 7(b)(3) is expressly conditioned on and limited by the special compensation provisions which it contains. These are set forth in full text in § 794.100. They require payment to the employee of compensation at specified rates for certain periods within the workweek when such periods are included in his hours of work. Their application requires an increase of at least 50 percent in the minimum wage rate otherwise applicable to the employee in such workweek “for employment in excess of forty hours” and, in addition, if such employment is “in excess of twelve hours in any workday, or * * * in excess of fifty-six hours in any workweek, as the case may be,” the employee must be paid overtime compensation “at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate at which he is employed” for all hours worked in the workweek in excess of the specified daily standard or in excess of the specified weekly standard, whichever is the greater number of overtime hours. The sections following discuss separately the application of these provisions to workweeks when the employee's hours of work do not exceed the daily or weekly standard specified in section 7(b)(3), and to workweeks when hours in excess of the daily or the weekly standard are worked.

(b) The special compensation requirements of section 7(b)(3) apply to an employee otherwise eligible for the exemption whenever he works more than 40 hours in a workweek for an enterprise described in and operating under this subsection. In any workweek in which the employee does not work more than 40 hours for his employer only the minimum wage requirements of section 6 are applicable. This is because section 7(b)(3) operates only as an exemption from the requirement of section 7(a) that compensation at a rate not less than one and one-half times the employee's regular rate must be paid for all hours worked by him in excess of 40 in the workweek. (This general 40-hour workweek standard has been applicable since Feb. 1, 1969, to all employment within the general coverage of the Act, regardless of whether any overtime pay requirements were previously applicable to such employment before the provisions added by the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966 became effective.)