Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Time Off for Bad Weather

With the recent wintry weather that New York has experienced this year, many businesses closed their stores, locations or offices either because of bad weather or in anticipation of bad weather.  The Mayor's and the Governor's decisions to close the transportation system in anticipation of a blizzard that never materialized also did not help matters!

The situation has prompted a number of questions concerning how employees' pay should be treated when a business closes because of weather conditions.

Here are the rules of thumb:

(1) For employees who are exempt from minimum wage and overtime laws, they do not have to be compensated if they do not show up for work because of bad weather if the business remains open; if an employer closes the business due to bad weather, the employee's full salary must be paid for the pay period even if he or she may not have worked the full period.  However, in the case where the business is open, but the employee does not appear for work, if the company has a paid time off policy, then the employee can ask to be paid for the day if he or she has accrued time.

(2) In the case of non-exempt employees, that is, employees that are subject to minimum wage and overtime laws, if the company closes, they are not entitled to be paid, but the company can allow the employee to apply any accrued paid time off if the company has such a policy.

An interesting situation arises with employees that can telecommute.  If an exempt employee works remotely from home on a bad weather day, no deduction can be made if the employee is "absent" from work.  However, because of the difficulty of monitoring whether an employee is actually working at home, non-exempt employees should always be prohibited from working from home.

Paying employees for work when they are not actually in the office or the place of employment is a difficult issue for many business owners.  The rules are complicated enough, so as businesses become more affected by global weather changes, it is a good idea to have a set of rules and policies in place for exempt and non-exempt workers, and to make them known to employees so they are not surprised by any deductions from wages.