The Plymouth City Council may be looking to clarify the city’s employee holiday policy. Clerk-Treasurer Jeanine Xaver says there was recently some confusion about whether employees should get paid for holidays, if they don’t work the days before and after.
She says the issue came up when an employee was out of paid benefit days, but was granted permission to take off the day after Christmas without pay. “They did not work a full day the Friday before Christmas,” Xaver explains. “Our Christmas holiday was Monday and Tuesday, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and then this person took the day after Christmas off without pay, and then expected to get paid for those two Christmas holidays. And I did not pay them.”
But she says City Attorney Sean Surrisi took a different view of the employee handbook and felt that employee should get paid for the two holidays. To settle the dispute, they took the issue to city council members last week, since they’re the ones who officially set the employee handbook. “So after a lot of discussion, they basically approved payment of those two days,” Xaver says, “because they believed it was a misunderstanding because they believe the employee thought they were going to get paid, as interpreted by the department head.”
But Xaver says council members want to revise the handbook, so that employees must either work or use a paid benefit day on the days before and after a holiday, in order to get holiday pay.
