When you work on a holiday, you have three options: 1) Be paid 2½ days’ pay; 2) be paid 1 day’s pay and get 1½ days’ makeup time to use later; or 3) take 1½ days’ pay and get 1 day’s makeup time to use later. It is your choice what to take. Just note what you want to do on the bottom of your timeslip.

When a holiday falls on a weekend, as Christmas and New Year’s Day do this year, that day is the holiday. People who work will get holiday pay. People who are off will get a makeup day. You can choose to take it on the day before or after, but the TU will remain open those days.

An employee may substitute Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve as an optional day off. Employees who work either the eve of the holiday or the holiday or both shall be paid one shift at the holiday rate. Holiday pay rates apply when the shift starts on the holiday, not the eve.

Part-time employees who work more than 28½ hours a week get pro-rated holiday pay.

Employees cannot be required to work more than three holidays a year. Those who choose to do so get a day’s pay or makeup day in addition to normal holiday pay. (The company can give first preference, however, to those who have worked fewer than three holidays.)

Over the years, the holiday-pay language has been added to and amended. The language on holidays falling on weekends was bargained in the 2000 contract, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. Day was added as a floating holiday. In our last talks, we bargained a benefit that allows colleagues to substitute a different religious holiday for Christmas, addressing an issue raised by Jewish and Muslim coworkers. The language is in section 27 of the contract, pages 56-57. Yes, that language, like most of the contract, remains in effect.

If there is a benefit you want explained, email us at office@albanyguild.org.

Guild Executive Board member Tim Neff is among the current honorees for the Publisher’s Quarterly Award for Excellence.

It is no surprise to his colleagues that Tim does great work, and we are grateful the Times Union recognized him. It just shows that you can take great pride in your work and be active in the union.

Here’s what the company said about Tim:

“During a dramatic downsizing of our staff, Tim has gone above and beyond to make sure that timesunion.com not only succeeds but stands out among all Hearst news sites. During the past few months, our site has seen phenomenal growth, and much of that is due directly to Tim’s efforts.”

Associate editor Mike Spain, one of the newsroom’s top managers, said: “Tim’s knowledge and experience in our newsroom operation combined with his skills in the digital platform have made him one of our biggest assets. The evidence of this is our continued climb in online audience.”

Go Team leader Mike Goodwin, another newsroom manager, said this about Tim: “To understand Tim Neff’s impact on the website, you need to simply look at the traffic numbers from a recent week he was on vacation. Traffic was down on several days. Tim is always easy to work with and suggests plenty of ideas for the Go Team and the newsroom. But he also creates plenty of content on his own, photo galleries and such, that help fatten the numbers.”

As the company wrote: The negative impact when Tim is away was echoed by city editor Teresa Buckley: “I’ve never heard so many people ask when someone is returning from vacation as when Tim took time off over the summer. There is a different air when he is around. It’s not so much his outward energy, but the knowledge that he’s cooking up ways to drive traffic, creating galleries or enhancing packages, and asking the newsroom to put together the key elements that bring in readers.”

Tim works in an area that has seen a sharp reduction in staff, from nine full-time employees to four.

Hearst executives Steve Swartz, Mark Aldam and Lincoln Millstein have praised the website’s outstanding performance, the company said.
Editor Rex Smith, the newsroom’s top manager, said in the company bulletin: “Tim is the very model of a journalist who has adapted to our changing professional environment. What’s admirable is that as he has shifted from a print-based job to a digital role, with all the learning about technology and new modes of content presentation that such a change requires, he has not wavered a bit in his devotion to high standards. He’s a thoughtful journalist and a valued colleague.”

Tim joined the Executive Board this year after his colleague Mark Ramirez left for a job in New Jersey. We’re proud of the work Tim does with the Guild, and we’re especially proud to see his hard work at the Times Union recognized.