Vacation Pay

Another uplifting factoid related to the question and answer session a few days back ...

The Collective Bargaining Agreement (the "union contract") says that a week's vacation is based on "straight time earnings," meaning the forty hours of regular pay that employees work each week is what makes up a week's worth of vacation pay.

So here's the new deal (which I explained to a disgruntled artist last week): You work a forty-five, fifty or fifty-five hour week, your vacation pay is based on forty-hours of your straight-time rate in a workweek.

Say you now work a forty-five hour week as a regular thing. That weekly paycheck you get isn't based on the old forty hours formula, but the newer forty-five hour deal (Forty straight-time hours plus five hours at time and a half.)

Which means that overscale employees who shift from the forty-hour week to the forty-five hour week, yet still get the same weekly pay, are going to see their vacation checks shrink because those checks are based on forty hours, and their hourly rate has been cut.

Slick, huh?

Just another way that everyone gets to tighten their belts in these recessionary times.

Merry Christmas to all.