Wage/Hour...27 Bi-weekly Payperiods

J Mack

Having supported general industry and the health care industry for longer than I want to recall, this year posed a "new" debate within our organization..ie., "an extra pay period" for our bi-weekly paid employees. Seems, after a little research, this phenomonon will not occur again until 2016.

Just wondering who else is having this discussion. The answer is most interesting, if you are willing to take the time to examine it. And, what did you do about it? I'll be glad to share our answer.

J Mack

sonny

Welcome to the Forum, J Mack. If you do a search (try extra pay 2004) you will find a few prior discussions on this topic which should help.

System

Yes, Welcome, J Mack!

Sonny, I did a search and it came up with 663 thousand topics. I couldn't find one that led to this discussion. Of course I didn't read them all. What are some of the discussions and/or problems?

Thanx!

sonny

Wow, that's a lot of topics.x:o Maybe someone from the Forum can help and provide a link. When I did Extra Pay 2004 I only got 3 or 4.

Don D

There's really not much you can do about it other than discuss it and pay people accordingly. If your policy, offer letter, past practice, verbal promise or union contract recognizes the fact that the employee will be paid bi-weekly, a certain amount, then it must be paid regardless of the number of pay periods in a year. The only way I see someone slipping out of this dilemma is if they offered an annual contract for a set amount per annum. Since you only pay people for work performed during a pay period (or in pay status), does it really matter how many weeks they performed it during any one year?






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teamwork

This topic came up yesterday at our office. I called our payroll vendor and they sent me the following information;

They said that approximately every seven years the calendar days fall in such a way that there can potentially be 53 weekly or 27 bi-weekly odd pay weeks (as opposed to 52 and 26).

They refer to this as the 7-year itch! They have told us if you are on a bi-weekly odd schedule you will be on a bi-weekly even schedule and vis-a-versa. They seem to think that for most of their clients this transition will be seamless.

They asked us to look at the quesions below and if we answer yes to any of them then we have some decisions to make.

1) Your payroll is processed on a weekly or a bi-weekly odd schedule w/ a first paydate of Friday, January 2, 2004 and the last paydate of the year processes during the week of December 27, 2004.
2) You have contractual agreements w/ salaried employees where a strict annual salary doallr amount is to be paid.
3) You have weekly or bi-weekly deductions that are withheld based on an annual payment amount.

The decisions are:
If we answered yes to #1 and #2, our contractual payments to employees should be evaulated and perhaps adjusted (and then re-evlauated for 2005).
If we answered yes to #1 and #3,our 2004 deductions should be reviewed (perhaps cancelling the deductions on the last payroll of the year).
If we answered yes to only #1, then no action on our part may be necessary.