Vacation, public holidays and absences from work (2024)

FAQs

Does PTO include federal holidays? ›

Here's what you need to know about PTO during the holidays: You can deny PTO requests: Although it can be tough, employers do have the right to deny a request for PTO during the holidays. There are no federal mandates requiring employers to give employees time off on nationally-recognized or other holidays.

An employee on vacation before or after the holiday receives holiday pay. An employee who is sick the day before or after the holiday (or both) receives holiday pay only if a doctor's excuse is provided. Sick days, if available, can be used without a doctor's excuse.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick leave or federal or other holidays. These benefits are matters of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative).

Holidays. When a holiday falls during a week in which an employee is taking FMLA for the whole week, the entire week is counted as FMLA leave.

Hours worked on holidays, Saturdays, and Sundays are treated like hours worked on any other day of the week. California law does not require that an employer provide its employees with paid holidays, that it close its business on any holiday, or that employees be given the day off for any particular holiday.

Government holidays don't guarantee a day off for everyone

While the federal government has designated 11 days as holidays, for the most part, only workers for the federal government get those days off.

There is no legal requirement in the United States for an employer to provide any paid vacation leave. There is no required number of days of paid vacation. In fact, in the USA an employer does not have to give any paid vacation, ever. The USA is not Europe.

It is illegal for an employer to fire a worker for falling ill, regardless of how many days they take off. Often, when an employer provides a strange or untrue reason to justify a worker's firing, they are in the wrong. Workers need to contact a business lawyer as soon as possible in these situations.

PTO is any time an employee is getting paid while away from work—it's more all-encompassing than “vacation.” Think of it like this: all vacation is PTO while not all PTO is vacation. Some examples of PTO include parental leave, jury duty, sick leave, holiday pay, or disability leave.

When employees exhaust twelve weeks of FMLA leave and still cannot return to work due to their own medical impairment, the employer may have an obligation under the ADA to grant additional unpaid leave as a reasonable accommodation, in some situations.

Do employees accrue vacation while on FMLA? ›

An employee on FMLA leave must be treated like other persons on a similar leave of absence. So if the personnel policy provides that employees on other forms of unpaid leave accrue sick and/or vacation leave, then employees on FMLA leave must also be permitted to accrue sick and/or vacation leave.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. It also requires that their group health benefits be maintained during the leave.

PTO policies typically provide a pool of paid days employees can use for a variety of reasons. There are three main PTO strategies that employers use: accrual, allotment, and unlimited. PTO policies most often include national and floating holidays, paid vacation days, paid family leave, and paid sick leave.

Typically, unlimited PTO does not replace company holidays. Instead, they're additive: employees get those holidays off, without needing to make a PTO request.

We wanted to remind you that Thursday, July 4, 2024, is a federal holiday in observance of Independence Day. Depending on your payroll schedule, that may mean you need to run payroll one or two business days early to get everyone paid on time.

How does PTO work? It depends. Every PTO plan is different, but while traditional leave policies typically grant employees 30 paid days off per year — 10 days of paid vacation, 8 sick days, 2 personal days, plus 10 paid holidays, most PTO policies give employees between 15 and 20 days plus company-observed holidays.