Business Services Industry

Personal liability, Medicare and COBRA, holiday pay

HR Magazine, Dec, 2004 by Diane Lacy, Shari Lau, Ruhal Dooley

When an employee is required to work on a holiday, you have several options, assuming that the employee is not covered under a collective bargaining agreement. Exempt employees are only required to receive their regular salaries. Nonexempt employees are only required to be paid for the time they do work.

However, if you want to compensate employees who must work instead of taking a paid holiday, you have several options. You can pay a premium for working that day. You can pay time and one-half, double time, triple time or anything that seems practical. As an employer practice, you may choose to pay for both the holiday pay and for the hours worked on the holiday (two days' pay total)--for both nonexempt and exempt employees.

You also may offer the employees paid time off or unpaid time off in the future--one day, two days or anything that seems practical. You may not, however, give time off in lieu of pay. That is, employees must be paid for the time they do work, and you can opt to give a future, normally scheduled work day off. You are not obligated by law in most cases, but you may choose any combination of the options mentioned.

--RD

Online Resources

For additional questions and answers, see the online version of HR Solutions at www.shrm.org/hrnews.> DIANE LACY, SPHR, SHARI LAU, SPHR, AND RUHAL DOOLEY, SPHR, ARE INFORMATION SPECIALISTS IN SHRM'S INFORMATION CENTER.

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