Human Resource Blog

Providing holiday benefits to exempt employees

My employer pays its non-exempt employees 1.5 times the regular wage in addition to the holiday pay at straight time that the employee would have earned had they not worked on the holiday. However, there is no written policy for what happens to an exempt employees who works on the holiday. It is understood that exempt employees do not receive additional pay but one manager may offer another day off recognizing the effort while another may choose not to. Does this ambiguity increase and decrease an employer’s exposure to unfair labor practice?

Probably not. First of all, unfair labor practices generally applies only to union situations.

There is no law that requires employers to offer exempt employees an extra day off when they work on a holiday.

Exempt employees in one department (or who work under one manager) can be treated differently than exempt employees in another department (or who work under another manager.) This can be because there is a valid business reason, or simply because the managers have different leadership styles.

In a hospital, doctors may be expected to work on holidays, while accounting staff routinely receives the holiday off. If a member of the accounting staff works on a holiday, her boss may give her an additional day off during the week. Doctors who work on holidays do not normally receive this benefit. Is this illegal discrimination? No, it is simply different requirements for different positions.

If the days off were awarded based on race, color, sex, pregnancy, national origin, religion, disability, age (over 40), etc. then that might be illegal discrimination. Or if the extra days off had a dispariate impact on members of one protected group, that might be illegal discrimination. But as it stands, it simply appears that one boss is more generous than the other.