4-day work weeks

njjel

For those of you who have 4 day work weeks how do you work it for a holiday that falls on their day off? We work a 35 hour work week and are looking at having maybe 4-6 ee's work a 4-day work week for a long term special project and wondered how to handle the holiday issue.

pork1

NJJEL: I would work the same as any other paid holiday, except that when it occurs and they have not had an opportunity to work the day before and the day after to be eligible to collect. If one is out on a authorized leave of any kind, we accept that day as an authorized day of leave and pay the holiday pay.

PORK

Whirlwind

Because we are a 24/7 operation, we have it set up where everyone earns 8 hours (or part-time equivalent) of "holiday credit" regardless of what day it falls on in relation to a given shift pattern. If it cannot be taken on the actual day -- either because the ee is already off that day or because they cannot be released from duty -- then it's banked to be used at another time. The applicability in your case would be that the person working four 10's would earn 8 hours for later use.

atrimble

We just faced this issue with President's Day. Because we just got the Board to pass a resolution stating that holiday pay is considered actual work time, then the 8 hours holiday pay is calculated into the work hours for the rest of that work week. So if an employee works four 10-hour shifts in a work week, they have the choice of taking the holiday pay (that occurs on their day off) as overtime, or taking flex time during that week. So say they are scheduled Tues thru Friday, with Monday being a paid holiday. They start their work week with 8 hours already on the books. They can then take off early a couple of days (at 4 hours each), take off an entire day and burn two hours of vacation to make up their 10 hour shift, or just work their regular hours and get 8 hours overtime. Supervisors are encouraged to reschedule employees so that they would have worked on the holiday, so they don't have to juggle additional time off issues the rest of the week. I think we've only got two employees on the Tues-Fri schedule, with the rest of our 10-hour shifters doing Mon-Thurs. Most of our holidays are on Mondays...

Of course, how you handle this may be different since your regular schedule is less than 40 hours. Do you typically pay overtime for more than 35 hours worked, or do you go by the standard "over 40 = overtime"? Plus, does your Board look at holiday as an extra "don't have to work" bonus, or do they consider it time on the books but not worked?

pork1

ATRIMBLE: Yours is certainly more than the FLSA requires.

Holiday hours is never considered anything more than regular hours. O/T does not come into play until the 40 hours worked are accomplished and real work is added to those hours for O/T pay.

In our case and what I believe is the way that the Holiday hours are to be folded into the compensation system, it takes 40+1 hours of physical work to start the O/T to be calculated into the weekly pay check. In our case 40 hours + the holiday pay is 48 regular hours for pay. O/T then is added to all hours worked over 48 hours. Our computer and soft ware program identifies the Holiday and sick hours, serperately. For Christmas Holiday our production manager paid every non-exempt employee double time for the holiday hours actually worked.
Now that was real nice, but now they want all holiday hours worked as double time.

Sometimes we can win for loosing.

PORK

atrimble

I understand that we're not operating at the base minimum requirements of FLSA. For example, our holiday compensation scheme is even MORE employee friendly than what I stated above. Because we consider holiday time as hours worked, if an employee actually -works- on the holiday, they get double time (not just time and a half, which working on the holiday would add to the rest of the week's hours worked making in overtime) for that work, plus the holiday pay for those hours, so they end up getting paid triple time for hours worked on a holiday. THEN combine that with the rest of the work week and possibly any stand by pay, and some on-call employee could get upwards of 160% of his/her average weekly wage. Of course, working 8 hours on a holiday like Christmas might spoil the joy...

By the way, before implementing this policy, the Board compared local practices, and the City and the University both consider holiday pay as hours worked. We may be in the minority of employers, but in this locale, we match the practice for a majority of the employees.

JudyT929

I used to work a 4 day work week at my present employer, we work a 37.5 hour week. I worked 3 9.5 hour days and one 9 hour day; on holiday weeks those that normally work a 4 day week work have to work regular hours (7.5 hr days) for the working days.