Holiday pay on a weekend?

lorrie

We are updating our holiday policy and I wonder how other companies handle holiday pay for regular, full-time employees if the holiday falls on a weekend or other unscheduled day?

For example, we have delivery drivers who are typically scheduled Mon - Fri and work approx. 55-60 hours per week. A handful of our drivers have chosen a 4-day schedule, so they work 4 days Mon - Fri about 48 hours per week. They each have a set day off, some are off on Monday, some on Tuesday, etc. If a driver is scheduled Tues - Fri and works 48 hours that week, should he be given 8 hours of holiday pay for Monday (Memorial Day)? Of course, this situation will affect different drivers when the 4th of July holiday comes up on a Friday.

Along the same lines, the next question is what if a holiday (Christmas for example) falls on a Sunday and the company does not close except for the normal weekend? Do any hourly employees receive holiday pay? Or possibly a 'floating holiday' so hourly and exempt employees can take a paid-day off at another time?

I realize there is no law that says a company must pay extra for holidays, but it is a nice benefit and I am just wondering how other companies handle this. We currently only recognize 6 holidays, which means we only close for these 6 days if they fall on a Mon - Fri. (Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year's Day).

Thanks for sharing your ideas!

jimlegal

Holiday pay is a benefit to the employee, thus it should be paid to the employee as part of the employee - employer relationship. Our policy is that if the holiday falls on a Saturday is is observed on the Preceeding Friday. If the holiday falls on a Sunday it is observed on the Upcoming Monday. If the employee works 40 hours during our week, we still pay 8 hours regular pay as holiday pay. With a past employer I experienced an attempted change in the holiday pay situation, it was very, very ugly, moral went down and it took sometime to recover. Be cautious and good luck.

Whatever

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 05-29-03 AT 10:22AM (CST)[/font][p]Fact of the matter is that no too many holidays fall on a weekend and then not every year (Christmas, New Years Day, July 4th). Therefore, company policy is usually to give the Friday or Monday surrounding the holiday as a paid day off. It isn't worth the aggravation and bad will not to give a day off to save a few bucks.

lorrie

Although this weekend thing only happens every few years or less, our company does not necessarily close on the Friday or Monday following the holiday so we cannot give this as a day off for all employees. This issue only came up because I think we should write out our holiday pay policy for future reference.

The current issue is whether or not full-time employees who are not regularly scheduled for Memorial Day should still receive holiday pay. Our current policy only addresses holiday closings, not holiday pay, and we can't look at how this was done in the past because we have never before had 4-day a week full-time employees during a holiday. I told payroll that my interpretation of the policy's intent is that these 4-day a week, full-time employees SHOULD receive 8 hours of holiday pay in addition to their regular check, but I wonder how other companies handle this because how we handle this Memorial Day holiday will set a precedence for the future.

Balloonman

If the holiday falls on a Saturday we celebrated it the Friday before, if it falls on a Sunday we celebrate it on Monday. If they work on the holiday, we pay them the holiday pay on top of their regular pay. I also ask in lieu of do they want the following Monday or Friday off if work load allows it.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

HS

The way I see it, your company has 6 paid holidays. Regardless of what schedule a person works, they should be eligible for the holiday. It could be handled either by paying them for the holiday, giving them a 'floating' day of their choosing or, give them a day off in the same week. The last two options avoid paying overtime.

As far as the weekend holidays, as others have said, you could observe a Friday before, or Monday after...or do the 'floating' holiday thing.

POPEYE

>> It could be handled either by paying them for the holiday, giving
>them a 'floating' day of their choosing or, give them a day off in the
>same week. The last two options avoid paying overtime.
>

HS- Are you saying with option 1 that if a holiday fell on a Sunday and an EE worked the following M-F and you paid them for the holiday that overtime would be involved? Anywhere I have worked only used "hours worked" to compute overtime and holidays or other paid leave time has not been used.

HS

depends on your policy...but what I meant by 'overtime' was over the normal hours of work...sorry for the confusion.

kcovalt

Holiday pay for 8 hours would not count toward overtime owed. Because holidays are not considered time worked, the employees would just receive 8 hours at straight time. We pay for the holiday, rather an employee is scheduled to work on the holiday or not. If the concern is rather to pay and not rather to give them an additional day off, I would pay all eligible employees 8 hours for the holiday.

ray a

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 05-30-03 AT 08:43AM (CST)[/font][p]As others have said, when the holiday falls on Saturday, we take off on Friday. If it falls on Sunday, we take off on Monday.

The other issue is what to do with people who work a 4 day work week. We offered that option for awhile. If the holiday fell on their scheduled day off, they took off the previous or following scheduled workday. But, even though their regular scheduled work days were 10 hours, we paid only 8 hours for the holiday. They had to make up the other 2 hours on other days. If work warranted it, some worked their 4 scheduled days and received holiday pay on top. By policy, holiday pay does count toward overtime along with the days worked.

Mike

We have a couple of locations that operate 7 days per week. This requires a 4-crew schedule. Some holidays fall on days on which one of the crews is scheduled to be off. We pay them for the holiday.