Human Resource Blog

Worked on a holiday

I have an employee who just started and worked on a holiday. Since he has not been here a full two weeks i was going to pay him hourly. Then he will become a salary employee. What do i pay him for the holday that he worked 5 hours on?

We would suggest a different solution. Under the FLSA, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, a job is either hourly for the entire time, or it is exempt for the entire time. The US Department of Labor is likely to regard this as an illegal attempt to avoid paying overtime, by switching the employees status from payperiod to payperiod.

Under the FLSA, an employer can prorate an exempt employees salary based on the number of days worked, the first week the employee works — and that is what we suggest you do.   Suppose Teds first week of work at XYZ Corp. is Thanksgiving week. Ted works on Tuesday and Wednesday. He is off on Thursday, and works on Friday in the same payroll week. Ted worked 3 days during his first payroll week of employment with this company. He can legitimately be paid 3/5 of the first weeks salary.

However, if the holiday occurred during Teds second payroll week of employment, he would be entitled to his full weekly salary for the week. Even if you do not offer paid holidays to employees who have been with the company less than 90 days, an exempt employee who works part of the payroll week, and is ready, willing and able to work the entire payroll week, is entitled to payment of his or her full salary for the week.

In your case the exempt employee did work on the holiday. He just worked 5 hours instead of the normal shift. Under the FLSA, an exempt employee who works any portion of the day, is entitled to his or her full salary for the day. This is true even if the exempt employee works 15 minutes.