Requesting day off after the holiday w/o pay
Sheila2008
44 Posts
I have an employee that does not have any vacation/sick/personal days left for this year and is requesting the Monday following Thanksgiving and the day after off. He is requesting to take Monday off without pay, but is wanting to know if he still gets paid for the two day holiday.
Comments
Some companies have policies about unforeseen leave requests adjacent to holidays to prevent employees from "getting sick" on days they'd rather not work, like the Friday after Thanksgiving, or Christmas Eve. They usually cover unscheduled leave requests, not requests made in advance. Does your Company have any policy on this at all?
Also, is the employee exempt or non-exempt? If he is exempt, and he is ready, willing, and able to work on days the company is closed for business, he is entitled to pay on those days.
I don't think I am explaining myself correctly. He is an hourly ee and will have holiday pay for both Thanksgiving and the day after like all our ee's....but in addition he would like Monday following the holiday off without pay, b/c he does not have any vacation or sick time left this year (he used them up already). My question is can he take that day off without pay and will he still be eligible for holdiday pay? My Feild Supervisor sent me this excerpt "the ee must have worked the day b/f and the day after a holiday to be eligible for holiday pay" and "EE's shall not be paid for holidays occurring during excused unpaid absense or absence without pay".
Well, if he takes Monday off can he still have the benifit of paid a paid holiday?
The answer to your question is dependent on your policy. Where did the Field Supervisor get this excerpt? Is it from your policy? Some companies have a policy that says unless you work both the day before and the day after a holiday then you will not get paid for the holiday (or some sort of varation of that line). If you don't have a policy similar to that then the employee should get paid for the holiday. Since he doesn't have leave then he would not get paid for the days off he requested.
No, unfortunately we do not have a policy, but we are in the process of having one created. My FS said that the excerpt was 'law'. If an ee called off last minute b/f or after a holiday, I would consider it suspect. I think if we approve his Monday off without pay (b/c he doesn't have any vt/st left), he should be able to still have Thanksgiving and the day after pay like everyone else.
We are a fairly new company and have grown over the last couple of years. I just started and am asked questions like this everyday. some I can answer, but this one was tricky b/c of my FS saying that it is law...(I wonder if he thinks it's law, but really just one company's rule)
Okay, so I have been going back and forth with this subject with another HR person and this is what I was told in a nut shell. 'It is okay to request the day off after a holiday (and still receive holiday pay) if you have vacation time, but not okay if you want it off and request no pay that day due to no vacation time.'
Basically, our office is closed the day before Christmas and on Christmas, so our ee's will get pay for both days. I have an ee that requested the day after Christmas off, but he has no vacation time left this year. He is requesting it off with NO pay. Seeing that it is right after Christmas and this rule, not Law that states you have to have vacation time in order to request the day off after a holiday in order to receive the holiday pay for the two days recongized, kinda throws me. He is requesting the extra day off with no pay and if we are able to accomodate him ,I don't see why not.
It sounds like you have a pretty broad policy designed to prevent holiday period absences, because it covers unpaid leave requests even if the request for leave is made in advance. Here are the scenarios as I understand them:
If this is correct, then the employee about whom this discussion began is ineligible for holiday pay if they take the Monday off assuming they don't have intervening scheduled work days, because then Monday is not an adjacent day. It would be unusual (and arbitrary in my eyes) to cover Monday as a day after a holiday if the employee is scheduled to work on Saturday or Sunday and they appear as scheduled.
You said, "He is requesting the extra day off with no pay and if we are able to accomodate him ,I don't see why not." Let me see if I can help understand why not. I don't know your industry or company or culture but there are things we can tell about what the policy appears to be aimed at accomplishing. This policy appears to be designed to motivate people to avoid taking additional time off around the holidays if they have either used all their applicable PTO or if they have not yet accrued any to use. If the employee is in a production environment where ensuring you have enough people power on deck to get the job done, then this policy may help keep staffing levels up during holiday periods when staffing may otherwise have been low.
Yes, I finally got a grip on this subject. The blurbs I have typed back and forth to you, have been blurbs from myself and a few of the department heads going back and forth with each other and then with me......to just further confuse me, is why I kept writing. They have different 'opinions' on the subject. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
I just talked to an HR friend of mine who explained it to me (in beginners HR 101 format), just as you did, so that I (not an HR ee exclusively, but one who wears many hats in this company) could understand why this rule is in place and I completely understand. I am having an ee manual created by an Attorney and it will be ready to bring in the New Year. Thank goodness!!!! I am new to this company and new to my many hats and once it is all in writing, it will make one of my positions easier......Thank you so much for everything you have mentioned, your emails had become part of my rebuttal sort to speak with the other department heads, who only ‘dabble’ in their profession and not at all in HR.
I am not aware of any state that has a law that requires someone to work the day before and/or after to be eligible for holiday pay. It is a company decision - and I'd love to be told otherwise if that is the case. There certainly may be some union contracts with this stipulation. In my company of 2,000 employees, we have no such requirement and it never has been a problem.
Days off without pay must be approved by the manager. If workload permits, they can approve it. If they don't want to approve it, that's their call, it is not an HR decision.
So, long story short, can the person take the day off following holidays unpaid? Sure, unless you have a policy that doesn't allow that. And, frankly, I don't think that is a great policy.
Just this morning we had to make a judgement call on paying an employee who is in their 2 week waiting period before short-term disability pay begins. He had no PTO so he wasn't being paid. If he had PTO, we still would have paid him for the holidays rather than making him take PTO. Based on that thought process, we felt the right thing to do was to pay him for Thanksgiving and the day after and allowed it to count towards the waiting period.