Human Resource Blog

Vacation Pay at Resignation

	Benefits
Total Compensation Summary Performance Improvement Plan Performance Appraisal and Review Employee Payroll Status/Change Form Employee Change Form

	Termination
Employee Warning Notice Employee Final Warning Notice Employee Resignation Form Exit Interview Questionnaire Separation Checklist

Does Missouri have any law specifying if an employee gets paid for vacation time @ resignation?

I put it in my 2 weeks notice yesterday 1/23/08– and since it’s the beginning of the year i have 10 days paid vacation for the whole yr. I was hired Oct. 1 2006 & my last day will be Feb. 5th…
My employee handbook reads:
The vacation year begins Jan. 1 & ends Dec. 31. You will have vacation days based on your length of service as shown below.
(TABLE BELOW)
less than 1 yr —— 1 day for each full month worked prior to Jan. 1, up to a max of 8 days.
1-2 years —— 10 days
2-3 years —— 11 days and so on…….
CONT….
If your employment here ends for any reason, on your last day of employment you will be paid for unused vacation days earned in the current year.

Technically I have been working here for more than 1 yr so I have 10 days of vacation time. If I am reading this corectly then it means that i have 10days vacation this year, regardless of me quitting by the end of the first month of the year. My boss told me that I have 4.5 hrs accured this year so I would get paid for that, not my 10 days. Does this seem right? I mean shouldn’t I get paid at least for my 10 days? Please help.
FYI: This is a Small Business
MY MANUAL ALSO READS:
The policies described in this manual are not conditions of employment & are not intended to create a contract between any team member & me. This manual is designed to provide general info. to all team members, regarding how the agency operates, what the agency provides to team members, & what is expected in return. While broad in scope, this manual wil not cover every situation that may occur. It will be the agent’s discretion to make these decisions in a fair and equitable manner. The practices in this manual are subject to modification. To meet the challenges of the future, I reserve the right, with or without notice, to change, add to, or delete any of the policies, terms, conditions, and language presented in this manual. If an addition or change is made, a policy statement will be placed in the Addendum section until the entire manual is reprinted.

2nd FYI: No Addendum has been added to the manual EVER.
Please respond ASAP. Thank You

Missouri labor laws do not specifically address the issue of payment of accrued vacation time. Also, the Missouri Department of Labor and Industry doesn’t have an enforcement division. Any

Missouri worker with a claim against an employer, even for unpaid wages, must persue this matter through the courts. Depending upon the amount, this can be done without an attorney in small claims court, or by hiring an attorney for larger amounts.

A number of

Missouri employees have successfully collected accrued vacation pay plus penalties from employers.

Under federal law, some companies with large government contracts are required to pay for accrued vacation time upon termination. It is doubtful that a small business would fall into this category.

When a company grants PTO – paid time off, rather than vacation time, it can affect the payment upon termination. That’s because in most states, the employer gets to decide how much PTO is “vacation” time and how much is “sick” time. Sick time is almost never paid at termination.

It’s also possible that the employer is simply mistaken, and is assuming that the employee began work on October 1, 2007, and has less than one year on the job.

If retaliation, discrimination, a violation of FMLA law or a violation of an employment contract is involved, the employee might want to contact an attorney. Otherwise, the employee could file a claim himself (or herself) in small claims court. Small claims court costs little or nothing, and only takes a few hours of the employee’s time, so it’s worth a try.

The way this particular employee handbook is worded is unclear – perhaps intentionally so. It states that workers will be paid for vacation time “earned in the current year.” It’s not clear whether this means vacation time earned in the past 12 months, or vacation time earned in the current calendar year (in this case, since January 1, 2008.) It seems the employer is calculating the time accrued since the first day of 2008, since about 1.5 hours per week is accrued. (Even then, he is apparently not counting the vacation time the employee will earn in the next 2 weeks while she works out her notice.)

The employer’s argument seems to be that while the employee currently has 10 days of vacation, they were earned last year, not in the current year. That policy seems strange…but perhaps the employer wants to encourage workers to quit in the last quarter of the year, rather than the first.

It’s also unusual for the employer to reserve the right to change the policies in the handbook at any time, for any reason, without notice. If that’s the case, what’s the point of having a handbook? Apparently even if the employee was entitled to payment for accrued vacation time, the owner could change his mind without notice. It would be interesting to see how such policies held up in court.

Hindsight is 20/20, but in this case, it probably would have been better for the employee to take two weeks of vacation, and then give notice the day that she returned.