Holiday pay: another benefit from the Guild

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.