Payroll: Jury Duty + Time Worked

HR Surprise

First of all, we do not have a written policy on Jury Duty - but are currently working on one. Now...an employee - who normally works 28 hours per week - with Friday's off - was on jury duty for three weeks. She entered "jury duty" on her time card Mon - Thurs. But came in to work on Friday to catch up on her work. She added her time worked on Friday to the four days of jury duty - which of course put her over her 28 hours. The obvious question that is being argued is how to pay her - 7 hours a day Mon-Thurs (=28) plus 7 hours actually worked on Friday - for a total of 35 hours per week; OR just pay her for 28 hours as per her employment agreement. Help!

Down_the_Middle

I was prepared to conclude that 35 hrs of pay would be correct until you ended with the "employment agreement"....... That document, if it is a bona-fide agreement should govern how you pay the person. It's unclear whether they are exempt or not or whether the agreement makes a special provisions for "payment for hours not worked". If a salaried employee, I'd find it hard to pay for Friday's work hours. That s/b part of the job.

HR Surprise

The employee is not salaried/exempt. The 'agreement' is a personnel action form changing the employee's hours from 40 to 28 - not signed by employee, but by the supervisor and HR director. This reduction was at the employee's request.

Rockie

This is kind of confusing. If you don't have a jury duty "policy", there is no requirement to pay an hourly employee to serve on a jury. That is why the court gives the "compensation" they give to individuals to serve on a jury. Exempt employees however, cannot have their pay docked to serve on a jury.
It seems that the employee is assuming that she receives her full "hourly" pay while on jury duty. If that is your intent, that is fine, but this is not required. If you typically pay your hourly employees their full pay, then someone must have given her permission to work the "extra" hours (Friday) to catch up on her work; if these two assumptions are correct, then she would be entitled to pay for the time she served on the jury and the extra time she came in to "catch up".

What we do is grant five days a year for jury duty for hourly employees. If additional jury time is required, employees have the option of using PTO time or leave without pay. We also require them to submit the stub from the court for jury duty pay whish is deducted from their pay. This is sometimes more trouble than it's worth, but it also proves that they did serve on the jury and how many days they served; otherwise, they could be dismissed from jury duty and stay out an entire week and no one would be the wiser. (It does happen, believe me!).

Anyway...it sounds like she got a pretty good deal being out three weeks and getting full pay and extra days' pay for working just one day a week! You definitely need a policy.

Margaret Morford

You should check your state laws because many states have statutes mandating payment for jury duty.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge