Q: Both my teenagers have part-time jobs and they both had to work on Labor Day. One works for a national chain, and he was paid overtime. The other works for a local business and he was not paid anything extra for working on the holiday. I thought employers were required to pay for overtime. What am I missing?
A: First, I think you are using the term “overtime” incorrectly when referring to how the national chain paid your son. The term you should use instead is that he was paid “time-and-a-half”.
Wage laws define true overtime as “hours worked over 40, during a one-week period.” So, if your son is a part-timer I’d find it very unlikely that the hours he worked on Labor Day, were true “overtime” hours. What probably happened was that his employer –like many large employers– paid employees what’s usually referred to as holiday pay. Normally holiday pay is compensated at one-and-a-half times the regular rate, which makes it easily confused with overtime pay, which does the same.
The fact that your second son got nothing extra, is actually completely legal. Unlike true overtime, holiday pay is not regulated by wage laws. The law treats hours worked on a holiday the same way as hours worked any old day, or weekend. Employers are only required to pay at the regular rate. Anything beyond that is up to employers who are free to make their own rules.
For example: they can require that in order to be eligible for holiday pay, workers must have one year of employment, or work full time, or that it applies only to Christmas but not Labor day. You get the picture.
So, you may be wondering, why would some businesses pay an extra 50% to employees who work on a holiday if they’re not required to? For the same reason they offer paid vacation and sick leave when they are not require to: to stay competitive and attract the best talent.
To illustrate this point, ask yourself, now that your second son knows that his brother’s company has perks and his own company doesn’t, where do you think he’ll try to go next?
© Copyright Eva Del Rio
