NAPE Member Caroline Hogan is a Librarian at Lincoln Correctional Center. After working her normally scheduled 10 hour shift on her designated holidays for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, Caroline noticed on her paystub that 2 hours of vacation leave had been deducted from her leave bank for both of these holidays without her request.
Caroline reached out to NAPE for advice, and a grievance was soon filed on her behalf. The grievance argued that there was no reason for leave to be taken from Caroline, since she worked her normal 10 hour day and 40 hour week, fully meeting her scheduled hours for both weeks in question. A hearing officer agreed that leave should not have been taken, and the 4 hours of vacation leave was reinstated to Caroline.
NAPE identified this practice of deducting leave from employees after working on a holiday as a widespread issue at NDCS and potentially other state agencies. NAPE wanted to help ensure that this would not happen for employees going forward, so NAPE worked with DAS Employee Relations Administrator on a memorandum that was recently sent out to all agencies’ payroll departments clarifying how hours worked on holidays should be paid and counted towards an employee’s FTE. We hope that this will clarify confusion on the subject and ensure that pay and hours worked on holidays will be calculated correctly in the future.
Earned vacation leave should never be taken from employees without their request and when they do not actually use the leave. If you find yourself in a similar situation, reach out to NAPE as soon as possible.