Company to start enforcing makeup day rules

Days will expire after one year if not used. Those earned before 2016 can be kept

The Times Union notified the Guild this week it will begin to enforce a long-neglected contractual provision that says makeup days must be used within one year of being earned.

The change will take effect January 1 and apply to makeup days earned in 2016. The Guild asked the Company to provide employees with a list of all makeup days they earned in 2016 as well as the date earned so people can start to track them.

The Company agreed people will be able to keep any makeup days they earned prior to 2016.

The Company is within its rights to require an existing contractual provision be followed, even if it has not done so in recent years. The problem had been with tracking makeup days.

With personal and vacation days, the same rules apply to all employees: Personal days must be taken within the calendar year. Vacation days must be taken by April 15.

With makeup days, the date each expires is one year from the date it was earned. Going forward, the Company will have to track each day for every individual, and the employee will have to track when they earned makeup days and when they expire.

If an employee is unable to take makeup days within a year due to work schedule conflicts, those unused days can carry over and be taken at a mutually acceptable time. The contractual language now being invoked  is on page 57 if anyone wants to look it up for themselves.