So, snow has hit the UK and a lot have people have been snowed in. Others have been “snowed in”.
I heard some Union guy on the news moaning that people were not being paid if they didn’t show up, and were being asked to either gasp take it off unpaid, take it off as holiday or make up the hours later. The reporter even managed to let him get it out without pointing and laughing at him. So anybody else think people should be paid for not going to work?
Being self-employed, I get no paid vacation, no sick days, no paid holidays, no personal days . . . not to mention no health insurance, pension or 401k. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Very often, even if I do work, I still don’t get paid.
I have no sympathy for Union workers who whine about these things.
I thought the whole point of getting a salaried job was so that you could get benefits like vacation and sick leave and paid holidays and thus be able to get paid for not going to work occasionally. When my employer closes due to inclement weather, I get paid for not going to work that day. It’s beyond my control, so I’m not docked.
However, if I get up, see snow and decide I’m not going in and call in sick, and then they close after half a day, I still get charged a full day’s sick leave. It’s the gamble you take when you decide to call in sick because you don’t want to drive on icy roads.
I guess I don’t understand the issue in the OP.
We’re not talking about places where the company itself shuts down, we’re talking people who are unable/unwilling to put in the effort to get into work, although if they did get there there would be work to do.
It helps to live in a state where it is not unusual to have snow days. All the companies I’ve worked for in Iowa have a weather policy. Generally, there is someone who decides whether conditions are too poor to open, although my current boss has young children and so ours is now tied to the school closings. Anyone scheduled to work that day is paid. Other days you can take PTO if you want to avoid coming in bad weather.
When I lived in Ventura, we had a couple weather or earthquake paid days off, but no formal policy set out. It seems like there is always one executive who thinks it’s a good idea for their employees to risk death so that the phones can get answered.
It varies from company to company here (and there certainly are days where you just aren’t going anywhere due to the weather, no matter how much you might want to). I think my husband (salaried) would still get paid for it without needing to take a vacation day. In any of my hourly jobs, it was always a day’s wages lost. Most companies here are very understanding about snow days, though - I’ve had to call in a few times in blizzards (or showed up three hours late), and never had a problem.
The last big company I worked for, if the weather was bad in a widespread area then they’d close the company for the day and usually gave everyone a paid day off.
If the weather wasn’t that bad but you, personally, were stuck at home due to the weather then you would have the option of using a vacation day. This was used most frequently by older or less able workers who, for example, had medical problems that might be worsened by extreme cold, or who could not shovel their own driveway.
My mom will be paid for today, and she was “snowed in”. The Mom’s Day Out (read small daycare) she works for is tied to the schools, which canceled school due to fear of snow rather than real snow. If there are more snow days this month, the Mothers will not have to pay, and the teachers will not recieve money for not working.
My dad is salaried, so he sometimes (once in a blue moon) gets an official snow day off from work, but usually could take a vacation day if he wanted to due to weather (can’t imagine him doing it, but in principle . . . ).
Me, I’m doing the kind of hourly retail work where I probably wouldn’t get in trouble for calling in on a bad weather day, but I darn sure wouldn’t get paid for it either.
The last time I wanted to call in ‘screwed’ due to weather, it was the morning of landfall for Hurricane Katrina. But as I worked for AAA, I was told a truck was on the way to pick me up, because we WERE going to stay open. We did stay open long after the roads were closed to anyone not on their way to work, but thankfully we did finally shift calls to another center about 5 hours before all hell broke loose. If I’d owned a car, I would have refused to go in; the intersections are under water in Norfolk with the least amount of rain, and there’s just no way I’m destroying a car to get to an hourly job.
I’ve ‘driven’ to work where gravity directed the wheels <since the ice didn’t care about my bald tires> and slid off the road, slid across parking lots…It’s work. If they want you there, you try to be there, but it’s not worth damaging your vehicle.
Wisconsin here. The companies I worked for only closed a couple times due to snow. There were drifts on the roads and over cars up to 5 feet tall. One poor guy had the wind pack the engine compartment with snow before covering it to the roof. It took him a week to get it running again. There was no paid time off for weather. They did sometimes offer you to work extra hours on other days if they needed something done. You spent the whole time off digging out your vehicle and house anyway. I don’t feel a company owes you for what you didn’t do for them anyhow.
We don’t have snow days here. We have snow months, and you have to go to work every friggin’ day.
It really depends on the industry. The company that I work for does not believe in snow days and penalizing employees for taking snow days. The OPP has to close roads in order for us to have whats called a snow day.
Thats the stated policy , the unwritten one is that they leave the doors open and hope that people show up. The harsh application of diciplinary action, is simply to make it so that the weather has to be that bad before people actually call in , instead of at the first sign of a snow flake.
Then there is the fact that we live in an area that might see multiple days of snow accumulation over the course of a couple of weeks, taking one day off does not really cover it. Sooner or later your gonna need to come in and work your hours simply to pay your bills.
My own personal criteria for weather days, is white out conditions or iced roads in the general winter time frame, and the last snow fall of the season in april. Most I lose is about 80 bucks for taking a day off , instead of higher insurance fees and possible loss of life.
If your area is like England right now , sure stay home and either claim unemployment bennies or have the company pay you and when the weather is better , you owe the company unpaid saturdays or what ever the arrangement is.
Declan
Not necessarily. You’re also talking about a lot of people who can’t get in. I think some people have been skiving, but many genuinely can’t get to work.
Their contracts should say whether they can be paid for days like that (same as they’ll state how long they’ll get sick pay). I take it you don’t think the companies should break the terms of their contracts?
Luckily the company I work for is reasonable about this and I have a job where I can work from home if need be so it doesn’t really apply, I’m being productive regardless.
However, if I could not get into work due to snow and were being forced to either take a holiday or not get paid I’d be having serious questions about the sort of company I was working for.
Of course It is up to me to find out what the contractual obligations are before I sign-up.
And of course it matters how big the company is and what they can reasonably absorb.
In fact, this all has far too many “depends” for me to give an answer so make like my wife, ignore everything I’ve just said.
I’ve never had a work “snow day,” but then I have always lived within a few minutes’ walk of public transportation to my job. Others at my workplaces who live in places where they had to drive to the rain might call in when there is, say, a foot of snow in the ground in northwest Indiana and many smaller roads are impassable. Sometimes they will plan ahead and bring work home if heavy snow is expected, and sometimes they will just use a vacation day. Management is generally pretty reasonable about it.
BBC News has an article about this very thing - Q&A: Snow chaos and your rights
In my office, if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. You can choose to take a vacation or sick day. I live in town, just a few blocks from my job, so I almost always make it in. A couple of times I have gone home early and brought work home with me, or waited to come in until our street is cleared. When I lived out of town I would often stay with family members in town so that I could get to work. We’ve been experiencing some nasty conditions here and yesterday there were only three people in the office, all of whom live in town (myself included). I have to say, if I came in to work and others didn’t and they still got paid, I’d be pretty pissed.
Business is open. You don’t come in. Thus… You can use a sick/vacation/PTO day or whatever type of day you have in your bank of days, or take it unpaid if you have such an option. Why you should be paid (not use a time-off day) as if you showed up for work escapes me. That’s bad business because there is no cap/limit/controls/fairness.
I believe my company has a similar policy as well. If the business is open, you are expected to be there and your option is to use a sick day, of which there are a limited number, or one of your paid vacation days. We are not penalized if the business doesn’t open or if it has to close early. I assume that in really severe catastrophes, like lava falling from the sky or something, that affects the business for several days in a row, at some point our business insurance would be called in to mitigate the losses.
During the “blizzard of '78” my dad was working at a Ford stamping plant. He made it to work and they begged him to stay another shift or two because they were severely short handed. Production needed to continue, you know?
He could have made a lot of dough staying, but unfortunately he had to go home to his wife and 6-month-old.