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If you're working for free today, might as well put your feet up.
If you’re a salaried employee and you’re slaving away at work today, you may be working for free.
Leap years present an odd compensation dilemma for employees who don’t get paid on an hourly basis. Such workers receive a set salary for a typical year, which is usually 365 days. But there's an extra day this year.
Alas, for most employers, it doesn’t matter if leap years have 366 days; they still end up paying salaried workers the same amount.
Does this mean you’re actually an indentured servant on February 29? Employment experts are divided on this question.
Daniel Schwartz, an employment attorney for Pullman & Comley in Hartford, Conn., believes employers are getting a free day of work out of their overtime-exempt employees.
“The annual salary is just that, and the paychecks just reflect the portion of the year. Many employers thus get a 'free' day of work from exempt workers because they are not paying anything more than in non-leap years,” he wrote on the law firm's blog this week.
Others don’t see it that way.
“It’s all baked in,” said Brue Elliott, the manager of compensation and benefits for the Society of Human Resource Management.
If you’re making $100,000 a year, he continued, you get paid that over the course of the year, either weekly, bi-weekly, etc., whether you work 365 or 366 days. “Most employers don’t pay exempt employees on a per diem basis,” he added. Typical offer letters to salaried workers don’t specify you’ll be working a certain amount of days per year, he pointed out. They typically say, “you’re paid on an annualized basis.”
For some salaried workers, the leap year may mean you make more money during this 12-month period.
According to Michael O’Toole, director of publications, education and government relations for American Payroll Association, 2012 has 53 Mondays. So that means, if an employees gets paid every Monday they’ll get 53 paychecks this year, compared to 52 paychecks in 2011.
When there are more weeks in a year, some employers reduce a worker’s weekly pay to make it all come out even at the end of the year, he explained. But, he added, “that’s not great human resources relations.”
Hourly workers don’t have to worry too much about this debate. In the end, they could end up getting an extra day’s pay for an extra day’s work if they work throughout the year and the leap day falls on a weekday, as it does this year.
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One year (one revolution of the earth around the sun) is officially 365.25 days. For three years you get an extra 0.25 day's pay without working for it and make up for it every fourth year. To take advantage of this, take every leap year off for the entire year and you'll be ahead by 0.75 days! Course, you'd better save a lot during the three working years or you'll go broke!
This is really a fun and funny subject. Unfortunately too many take it seriously. If you were really concerned about leap year (and had thought of it at the time) you could have negotiated that into your pay. I am a salaried employee and resent the one person that had the remark about salaried employees NOT putting in their time on a regular basis. I put in more than 40 per week as do pretty much all other salaried employees that I know. I get a decent wage but am still considered to be living in the 'poverty level' bracket according to the US standards of what poverty income is. And I support a family of three on that. And I pay a mortgage rather than rent as it is more sensible. It takes this little thing called budgeting to do these things. Working on the 29th does not make a huge difference. I am paid for the year by the salary that I agreed to when hired being divided between 24 equal paychecks (for those of you that don't get it, there are twelve months in the year and I get paid twice per month). The checks are the same each time I receive them (great for budgeting!) and it does not matter the number of days that fell in that period. Hourly employees get paid by the hour as clocked in and out. Here is the big question: how many of you are currently at work reading these things and replying during work hours and getting paid for it? How many of you spend time each day texting others during work hours and get paid for it? Let's take a real good look and see how much complaining really should be done.
lets try some math 2080 hours stands for 52weeks times 40hr
52 weeks times seven days equals 364 so what happened to the 1 day on non leap years?
now where in the week the first day of the year decides if you work 1 day more or less per year.
remember there are only 14 different calendar year possibilities
get out your fifth grade math books to check you answers.
as some of the people above got their math wrong, they should not worry about a day with out pay they should thank their employer for over paying them.
Lets do away with the current calendar system...
This is hogwash on so many levels. Salaried employees are NOT paid for the hours they work, but for the job they do.
This is a misconception by employees who are basically trained by society that they're getting screwed (perpetuated by articles like this).
Some salaried employees work 50 hours a week in 4 days, others work 35 hours in 6 days. Some work even more. Doesn't matter. You're getting paid for doing the job. That's why you're exempt and if you come in for an hour but go home sick or take the afternoon off to go to your kid's little league game you legally can't be docked pay (of course, if you're not doing your job or went against company policy, you can be written up or fired).
If you're going to take this "hours worked" mentality (insisting that someone's getting screwed), than you have to look at it from the other side, too. An employer who pays monthly is getting less potential work days in even a leapyear February (29 days max) compared to a July (31 days) but the employee still gets paid the same. So, who's getting screwed?
Still...nobody. Salary was an agreement you both made.
It's Bush's fault
I should have been paid yesterday on the 28th for a normal year. Looks like an extra day to me, but, I got work at least. So it really depends on how you get the jing. My boss says I get paid for 31 days every month. I just get a deal when there are less than 31 days. Not complaining, don't want to work sat & sun for free.
This discussion reminds me every year when we turn the clocks back & ahead. If you work the overnight shift, as a salaried employee, you work the extra hour in the Fall without compensation. Same goes for the same type of employee in the Spring, except you are shorted an hour when we turn the clocks ahead.
"getting an extra day’s pay for an extra day’s work"
this person is a journalist? if I work an extra day and get paid... how is that an extra days pay????
sheesh. I should have been a journalist. They are the only ones that can be wrong more times than a weather person and still have a job.
cheers
JusDav
Nicely put! And, if you work an extra day and get paid, how is that an extra days work without pay?
I was having a happy day at work (doing the usual, surfing the net...) and i found this artlicle. Now I'm upset.
Interesting dilemma...as a salaried employee I get paid the same each pay period. As it is, sometimes I put in 9 hours a day and only 7 on another day (as long as I make my 80 per pay period). Looks like I'll have to slip out a half hour early a couple days a week over the next few weeks to make up for it (no time clocks here). Ha!
Heaven forbid you should have to work more than 40hrs avg/week.
Another story of the "WORKER" getting screwed.
Workers of the world unite and all that CRAP.
Does anyone here have ANY shame at all?
"Annual", as in one trip around the sun. This takes about 364.25 days, so 3 out of every 4 calendar years, most workers with annual salaries are getting paid for an extra 6 hours of time (or 2 work hours).
MSNBC need to fire the moron who wrote this story. It is totally stupid, doesn't mean anything, and wastes peoples time.
The most intelligent scientist in the world cannot create more time and the richest person in the world cannot buy more time. Time is precious an it doesn't discriminate. We all get the same amount of time to live our lives. If we have to add an extra day once every 4 years to keep the days and hours in sync, so be it. Quit wasting time talking about it.
It will be 2040 when Wednesday fall on Feb 29th again, so let's see........ Oh no!!! I will be 88 or dead.
"If you’re a salaried employee and you’re slaving away at work today...."
This has got to win the stupid statement of the day award. I work 10 hr days, 6 days / week. The salaried employees where I work "show up for their employment"( notice I didn't say work), no more than 8hr/ day, 5 days/ week, take a minimum of 1 hr for lunch( 20 mins for me), and then sit in their climate controlled offices playing "Angry birds" or looking at who knows what on the Web. And MSNBC asks if they are slaving away....Not in this or any other lifetime.
. . . that the 1% always has an excuse on why you should not receive fair wages for a days work? Well, get over it! The wealthy people who make the rules for this economy dictate that leap year is a day where they can increase productivity by 1/365th of a % while paying ZERO to the salaried employees. The same thing applies to hourly employees who work a shift when the clock goes forward one hour this Spring. According to the 1% those employees are not entitled for pay for the extra hour worked because in the Fall, the clock rolls back 1 hour, without regard to the individual employee who may not be on duty when the clock rolls back. Talk about Socialism. The Grand Obstructionist Party will twist even time to wring more profit out of the middle-class.
Thank God, the rapidly aging base of the Pubs is dying off so fast that they will be unable to unseat Obama in November, will be on full life support for the 2014 mid-terms and blissfully RIP for the 2016 general elections. Oh, Young Republicans are coming into the voting booth at a rate 10-1 less than Young Democrats. All that birth control is finally paying off too! Four more years, Hell, Forty More Years!
Not getting paid for working Feb 29 is total B.S. First of all , it is against FEDERAL law to work for FREE!! I don't care if it's a small company or a large corperation, they MUST pay you for time worked or in leiu of in paid time off. That's the law. Besides people are supposed to be paid on a daily rate by the hour or 40 hour week or bi-weekly or in some cases monthly , like retired people etc.... Here is a solution to this, lets make leap year a National holiday, nobody works nobody gets paid, everybody stays home and BBQ's kicks back and take a break it would only be one day every 4 years...I think we could all afford that....
And proof that a little knowledge (very little in this case) is a dangerous thing.
You might want to check the DOL's website and the definition of "exempt" and exempt pay before you freak.
That's why they call it an annual salary, not a 365 day salary.
Thank you. At least someone gets it!!
Actually, salaries are based on a 366 day work year. Therefore, three out of every four years, salaried workers get paid for one extra day that they never actually work.
Salaried workers get paid for any day they don't work...Sat, Sun, Holidays, call-ins, ect.
Seriously!! You really believe this nonsense?? If you are paid monthly it is just that...A WHOLE FREAKIN' MONTH. No matter how many days are in the month.
As a salaried worker of COURSE I know that essentially I am working for free today. If this is news to you as an employee, then you simply aren't paying attention and really need to wake up!
How are you working for free? If you work 5 days a week, some months you are working 23 days per month, others you work 21 or 22 and one you work as little as 20, but you get the SAME pay every month (or every pay period). This is in a normal non-leap year.
So, are you screwing the employer in the month you're only working 20 days? or his the employer screwing you when you work 23?
Or was this a salary based on a year and divided accordingly? A salary that you and your employer agreed to (even if you didn't negotiate, you accepted the salary when you took/kept the job).
And, if today is my day off, am I getting screwed out of day off? No. That's ridiculous. Just like this whole train of thought.
It's amazing how so many people bitch about their jobs. It's so bad at my company that I listen to people spending half their work day bitching to each other about their jobs instead of working like they are suppose to. In fact, I bet a good majority of the people commenting on this article were doing it on company time.
And you wonder why you have to keep finding another job? I wouldn't employ you either. If more people actually stopped and thought about how their actions affect their workplace, maybe things would be better off. True, I go to work for 'me' just like the rest of you. I come first, not the company. But I realize that if I don't help them be profitable, I may not have a job. Not necessarily because I would be fired but because the company would go out of business.
And finally, most salaried positions are salaried because they are based on 'task output' versus 'hourly productivity.' When you know you can get done everything you need to get done in six hours, chances are you screw around the other 2. And generally, most companies don't care because they hired you to perform the tasks and you did (you did, didn't you?)
Actually Justice099: I went to work at 4:00 AM and got out at 2:30 PM. And I don't have a computer to use for personal things at work 6 days/week. I am commenting at home. So with me, you would lose that bet.