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Legal?: Different Amount of Time-Off for Same Employees Performing Same Work?

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ChristinaChan

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

Here is HR the situation: Last year, 2 exempt employees were sent from my company on a program trip abroad. It was assigned to them and fell into their regular work load and official job duties. They were treated exactly the same as far as time off given after the program trip. This year, however, they assigned one lead person to manage the program trip and opened it up to the entire staff of my company and asked if anyone wanted to apply to be a "volunteer" to co-manage the trip (but basically be given the same duties as the secondary person last year, who's duties are a required element of this program to ensure its accomplishment). Two individuals ended up being chosen as these "volunteer" (as they put it) co-leads and were given the task to work as a team with this other lead individual on this project.

They are now giving this lead individual 3 days off as compensation for basically working 9 days in a row; however, they are giving the other two individuals only 2 days off for performing the exact same duties as the other individual, which are again required duties in order to make the program fully functional. They are stating that because these individuals applied/"volunteered" for this "volunteer" work and because it is not under their actual job title that this work cannot be counted as "official" work of their job duties and thus that is why the company is not obligated to fairly compensate the 2 "extra" individuals with the same days off as the lead individual.

All three hold the same management level type positions and are full-time, exempt employees of the organization. Additionally, all three are getting paid their regular rate of salary during the time spent on this trip. Although it is written as a "volunteer" role, they are in essence still getting paid for working this time as they would working the tasks that fall under their regular job duties. Additionally, no contract was ever signed by these two individuals stipulating different treatment for days off work or even agreeing to the fact that these duties were "applied" for rather than "assigned". Can anyone please tell me if their reasoning is legal or not. And if not, can you please point me to the FLSA or other law that they are breaking in coming up with their logic? Thank you for any assistance.
 


cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
Time off is not a feature of the FLSA, or in fact any Federal wage law. The Feds only care if you get paid appropriately; they don't give a hoot what the employer's time-off policies are.

While a state law could conceivably make laws on the subject of time off, CA is the only state that cares at all, and they don't care much. There are no laws, even in CA, regarding how much time off must be granted, or requiring that all employees (or even all employees with the same job duties) be granted identical time off.

Unless there is a valid and supportable basis to believe that the basis for he amount of time off granted to each employee is specifically because of their race, religion, national origin or other characteristic protected by law, this is a so-what issue as far as the law is concerned.
 

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