Paying Employees More to Work During a Holiday?

With the upcoming holidays, many employees wrongly believe that they are entitled to premium compensation by law, whether it’s time and a half, double time, or even additional paid time off. However, there is no federal law that requires employers to pay employees additional compensation solely because it is a holiday. Certainly, if the holiday were to push the employee’s total hours of work in the workweek over 40 (48 for some employers) they would be entitled to 1.5x their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40, but whether it’s a holiday or not does not matter for this entitlement.

Many employers do, however, have policies or practices that compensate employees for working on holidays. In those situations, employers are providing a benefit to which employees might be entitled to receive; but the benefit is within the discretion of the company to provide or withhold from employees and is not required by state or federal law per se.    

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