FMLA and paid holidays?

[Anonymous]

How would your employer handle this situation: You are on maternity leave after your 6 week disability pay runs out and you choose to go unpaid for the remaining weeks (up to 16 weeks in DC) -- do you get paid for the paid holidays (christmas and new year)? DH's employer says yes; my employer says no. My rationale is that if I opted to use accrued vacation leave for my FMLA time I would not have to tap that leave on the paid holidays. Anyone else in this predicament? My sense is that my HR dept simply hasn't been in this position before and doesn't know what to do (or they are just jerking me around). Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I think that if the day falls during the time you're using your paid vacation, it's easy to make the argument that that day doesn't count against your vacation spending. If it falls instead during the subsequent time when you're taking leave w/o pay then I think it's a pain for them to work out. They probably do need to pay your for it (although I don't know for sure), but it didn't seem unreasonable to me that my work didn't for that last period when I was on leave w/o pay. I also didn't push it either though since of course they do keep paying quite a bit out during "unpaid" time due to the subsidies they keep putting towards my health care package.

[Anonymous]

FMLA doesn't address your accrual of time, only your entitlement to have your job held. Your entitlement to paid holidays is based on your employment contract. Since you asked what others do, mine paid me.

[Anonymous]

In my husband's agency, you only get them paid if a paid day abuts them.

[Anonymous]

My work doesn't pay you for them and you don't get "extra" days added to the end of your leave. It sucks and I think it's a stingy practice since we only have like 12 holidays per year, but it's legal. The only thing your work cannot do is treat maternity leave differently than other types of leave; e.g. pay out holidays for people on sick leave for a bad back, but not pay them out for people on maternity leave.

[Anonymous]

My maternity leave included Labor day and I did not get paid for it.

[Anonymous]

I didn't get paid for thanksgiving, Xmas, or New Years while I was on FMLA leave, nor did I get extra days tacked on. It just doesn't work that way. If they want to voluntarily pay you that's very generous but they don't have to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my husband's agency, you only get them paid if a paid day abuts them.

This was also the case with my employer and my husband's. We just planned our paid and unpaid leave days around holidays and made sure to take paid leave before/after holidays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My work doesn't pay you for them and you don't get "extra" days added to the end of your leave. It sucks and I think it's a stingy practice since we only have like 12 holidays per year, but it's legal. The only thing your work cannot do is treat maternity leave differently than other types of leave; e.g. pay out holidays for people on sick leave for a bad back, but not pay them out for people on maternity leave.

If you are taking unpaid leave, this is exactly what it is, unpaid and why should be paid for holidays during unpaid leave? You shouldn't.

[Anonymous]

You could divide paid and unpaid if your employer allows it.