HOLIDAY PAY
chrissy14223
1 Post
My employer is closing their doors from Christmas Eve til New Years Day. They are paying us for four days out of those seven days, however, the other 3 days we must use personal vaca time or take it unpaid. Is it completely legit for a company to give you no choice as far as coming to work or not, and not paying you?
Comments
Maybe. Exempt or non exempt? Do the days off cross weeks? Will exempt employees be working at all during the work week?
Most likely they company can do this. And they can require that you use PTO/vacation to cover the time.
For non-exempt employees, they don't have to pay at all.
For exempt employees, an exempt employee must be paid their regular salary for any week in which they perform work. So if there is a work day during the week, and the exempt employee works, they must be paid for the entire week. Now, the employe can require that they use PTO/vacation time to be paid, that is perfectly acceptable. The only time there is a problem is if the exempt employee has no PTO or vacation available. They then must be paid for the time off. (This is different than when the employee is out of leave time and wants to take a day off for their own reasons, then you can dock an exempt for a day's pay.)
Under FLSA, hourly employees are never required to be paid except when they are doing work for the company. Sometimes there are questions about what constitutes work but this isn't one of those situations.
Exempt employees must be paid on a salaried basis. The salary basis requires that the amount of money paid as base wage each week be the same except under a few different conditions. When the company is closed but the exempt individual is ready and willing to work, the company has to pay that person EXCEPT when the closure is for a whole calendar week. If you are an exempt employee and if you perform no work during Christmas week, you are not entitled to any pay at all. Christmas eve is Monday this year. If exempt individuals will not be working from Sunday the 23rd through Saturday the 29th due to the company being closed, then they are not entitled to pay. However, in the following week, beginning Sunday the 30th, exempt employees who did not work on Sunday the 30th or Monday the 31st due to the closure are entitled to a full week's pay under FLSA.
So: nobody is entitled to any pay during Christmas week if nobody works during that week at all. However, exempt employees are entitled to a full week of pay for the following week, even though the company is closed for 2 days of that week. Hourly employees are only entitled to pay, unless you have policies to the contrary, for time during which they were working for the company.