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Holidays and PTO

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Vicki D. Graham

Guest
I am wondering if it is truly legal for a company to make you take your Holidays from your paid time off. Our company just went to what we call the Authority and we changed from a standard 10 hours a month sick leave and 10 or more hours a month annual leave and right at 12 Holidays a year to Paid time off (PTO) and extended sick leave (ESL). Which means if we are sick we first have to use the first 3 days we are sick PTO time and if we are out longer than 3 days then we can go into out ESL and also (this is my biggest concern) we have to take all our Holidays from our PTO. I mean all the official Holidays like New Year's, Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. I just would like to know if this is truly legal. Can a company actually make us use our vacation time for these particular Holidays. Any advice you can give me on this subject would be much appreciated. Thank you.

South Carolina
 


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buddy2bear

Guest
Holidays, sick leave, vacations, etc., are benefits that a company can/does offer to attract and retain employees. They are not a God-given right. You might have a slim chance of a claim for Christmas, since it is a religious holiday, but the rest of them are benefits. Quite a few companies are trying to boost profits and cut expenses by making their employees use their PTO for holidays. To me this is a red flag, and I would start looking really close into the company because I would be wondering what's next down the pike and why.
 

ShyCat

Senior Member
Perhaps you are missing the point of PTO. Some companies are dumping all the hours together in one kitty (PTO) rather than segregating them into separate piles of vacation hours, holiday hours, etc. It does avoid issues of "my religious holiday is sanctioned by the company but yours is not", or "the office in my country has more holidays than yours, nyah nyah". In the old way of doing it, for example, a non-Christian would have to use a vacation day for their holiest day, but gets paid for not working on a meaningless holiday of Christmas. For international companies, there have always been discrepancies between customary vacations and holidays in one country or another. Relocate to another office in a different country and suddenly you're getting twice as many paid holidays and three times as much vacation. People get a little grumpy about that, you know. So, throw all the hours into one pot and, for example, you use it for 10 holidays and 15 vacation days, while I use it for 6 holidays and 19 vacation days. Who is being short-changed?
 
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buddy2bear

Guest
Ha! Okay, okay, let's give the employer the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps ShyCat is correct (makes common sense), but there really isn't too many "touchy, feely, warm fuzzy" employers out there that I have found!
 

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