While many companies have promoted the idea of granting employees who work during a holiday such as Thanksgiving and Easter, others do not provide this benefit. But why should some be better off than others? Why not treat all workers equally, no matter who they work for?
To be clear, the idea of double pay during a holiday shift is not a legal right but rather a business choice to encourage workers to put in more work hours. The idea is if a worker can earn more than their usual wage, they would be willing to put in more hours, benefiting the company and the employee. While this idea sounds great in theory, the issues are presented when a law should be formed such as if all businesses or select businesses, the holidays that would apply, how long the shift can be, etc.
According to the Office of Human Resources Management, “Holiday work means non-overtime work performed by an employee during a regularly scheduled daily tour of duty on a holiday. An employee who performs holiday work is entitled to pay at their rate of basic pay plus premium pay at an equal rate to their basic pay for that holiday work that is not in excess of 8 hours.”
If all businesses, for instance, had to follow this as a new law, local businesses that make little profit would lose the potential profit of that holiday to pay the employees more, which could potentially shut down that business. Other companies that have a large amount of profits on normal days would also not make as much during the holidays, so as a corporation they would be losing profit during the holidays.
On the other hand, most companies lose profits during holidays anyways, so it wouldn’t harm the employees, but rather the company. For a mega-corporation such as Walmart or Target who make a large amount of profit while allowing employees to be paid double during a holiday, they can make that loss back. For those small companies, it can help to mitigate greed by the owner, overworking employees to earn as much money to benefit them and not the company.
So while this idea sounds like it can be useful for employees and companies alike, the chances of it being a law are rather slim… unless employees and worker unions fight to get it passed. The choice is clear either way: let it remain a choice for a company to let workers get double wages for coming in during a day when they would be cuddling near a fireplace with their pets or family, or a law for the company to do so.
