Getting screwed on our country's birthday!

What's wrong with this picture?

Some folks at my paper will work July 4, a holiday in America if ever there was one.
But they will get no holiday pay for working that day and some will get no holiday worked period. That's because, like most of corporate America, our company will observe the holiday on Monday, July 5.

Some of those folks working Sunday are off Monday, meaning they get screwed again because they get holiday pay, but no holiday worked pay. Consider the Monday through Friday worker who gets the 4th off and 5th off with holiday pay. Even luckier are the folks who are off the 4th and work the 5th. They get the holiday off and get time-and-a-half on the 5th.

So why are we saying this is a paid holiday when clearly it is not. The Monday through Friday person in our office gets to be off for the holiday and the schmuck stuck working Sunday gets no holiday worked pay and has to fight traffic because of downtown fireworks that clog the streets.

There is no incentive to work the actual holiday, you know the one our country was founded on, but there is a huge incentive to call in sick that day.

This would be no big deal I guess if there were Fifth of July fireworks or if everyone was on a salary and not hourly wage. Thoughts would be appreciated as I'm sure several newspaper and other companies will get away with this trick.

 

We don't get time-and-a-half either. We get another day off during the week if we either work on a holiday or it falls on our scheduled day off.

 

I'm not sure what you want here, really. The official holiday is July 5. The fact that there are fireworks displays on July 4 is almost irrelevant. What do you want them to do, pay holiday pay for both days? What if someone works both days?

It sucks, but it's one of those things that happens every few years. And it'll happen again at Christmas, whatever day the company picks for that holiday, because Christmas is a Saturday this year.

In the pantheon of ways newspapers screw their employees, this is pretty low. And I say that as someone who's been in position to get screwed on things like this before. And while working on Sundays sucks, it's not as though it lacks its advantages. Casual dress code, often very little actual work to do, etc.

 

Kickoff, this sounds like something Heartless, CNHI or Paxton would do. At my shop, Monday is being treated as the holiday.

 

I think you're misinterpreting his post. He's complaining that people who work July 4, which isn't a company holiday, won't be paid holiday pay. People who work July 5, which is a company holiday, will be.

Of course, there's no obligation to pay any holiday pay at all.

 

What I'm saying is that this would never fly in 95 percent of the corporate Monday through Friday world, but it is just routine in newspapers, hospitals and places where weekend work is common.

If you work both days then you get regular pay and then time-and-a-half. But if you work the day 99 percent of America celebrates its birthday, you get squat and if you happen to be off the day the government deems we should celebrate you get squat again. So, again what is your incentive for working July 4th if you don't even get holiday worked pay. Working the holiday and getting extra pay is supposed to be the trade off. Our country didn't start July 3 or July 5.

I like to celebrate my birthday on the actual date I was born, not a date government workers deem they should get a three-day weekend.


I'm saying that on every other holiday during the year if you work that holiday, meaning the actual day, you get holiday pay.

Of course it never even occurs to those who work Monday through Friday - they are automatically given a three-day weekend with a paid holiday.

I've long ago stopped worrying about the 95 percent majority getting perks that us schlubs who chose journalism don't get. But this is a case of newspapers screwing their own employees out of legit holiday worked pay.

 

Yes there is an obligation to pay holiday pay especially when it is written into a union contract and you work that holiday.

 

If it's written into a union contract, sure. If it's part of the terms of your employment agreement, sure. But absent those things, if you're an at-will worker, then no, there isn't.

I suspect you'll find the same thing happens on Christmas this year.

You want the company to have to pay holiday pay for people who work two different days. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way, sob stories about the country's birthday notwithstanding.

 

I'm not saying they should pay holiday worked on two different days. I'm saying they should pay it on Sunday the Fourth of July, the date that we have celebrated for 234 years.

If you work that day, night in our case, fine, you get time-and-a-half but don't get to enjoy a big celebration. If you don't work, you do get to enjoy the celebration.

And what happens on Christmas is that the legal holiday will be Friday, which is Christmas Eve. Several people celebrate Christmas Eve and open gifts, etc. Same with New Year's this year as the paid holiday will be New Year's Eve, another day a lot of people don't mind celebrating.

We celebrate Thanksgiving on the final Thursday of November every year and eat lots of turkey and watch football and if we work, we get time-and-a-half. We don't do this and get time-and-a-half on the final Wednesday of November.

Sorry you feel the country's birthday is a sob story.

 

Leave the business. You wont have to work holidays anymore.

 

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