By Rick Gautschi
In City and County of Denver, 130 LA 837, May 21, 2012, a police officer began his regular shift during the afternoon of the day, immediately preceding a holiday. He ended his shift at 2:00 a.m. on the holiday, which was the officer’s scheduled day off. For the holiday, initially, the employer paid the officer for eight hours of work at his base rate of pay, i.e., holiday pay, plus pay at one and one-half times his base rate for the two hours that he actually worked on the holiday, i.e., holiday premium pay. Subsequently, the employer debited his pay for two hours, at the base rate, on the ground that applicable provisions in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) required the employer to pay a total of eight hours for any combination of holiday pay and holiday premium pay. Consequently, the officer was entitled to receive two hours of holiday premium pay and six hours of holiday pay. The union argued that the same provisions in the CBA obligated the employer to pay employees who worked on a holiday eight hours of holiday pay plus holiday premium pay for the hours that the employees actually worked on the holiday.
The arbitrator explained that holiday pay provisions in collective bargaining agreements serve the purpose of ensuring that an employee does not incur an economic loss when a holiday falls on a day during the regular work week. The question at the heart of the dispute in this case was whether the CBA obligated the employer to pay holiday plus holiday premium pay to an employee who actually worked on a holiday that fell on a scheduled day off. To answer that question the arbitrator considered several provisions in the CBA, logic, and past practice.
For example, one provision in the CBA stated only that employees would receive “pay for the holiday” for holidays specified in the CBA. Further, the arbitrator inferred that holiday pay exists to compensate employees for the missed opportunity to work that a holiday creates. Thus, because he actually worked two hours on the holiday, for which he was entitled to holiday premium pay, the officer’s missed opportunity for work on that day was six, not eight, hours. Finally, the arbitrator noted that the employer had not in the past paid more than eight hours of pay for a holiday. For these reasons the employer did not violate the CBA by debiting the officer’s pay by two hours at the base rate.
