Hours of Work

Am I entitled to overtime? Do I have to work Sundays? Can my hours be reduced?

The hours of work article of your collective bargaining agreement contains many important provisions that are essential to know. Such issues as the definition of full-time and part-time employment, when your schedule must be posted, when you receive overtime, how overtime is scheduled, how you become eligible for overtime pay, who may be assigned to work on Saturdays and Sundays, how work outside of store selling hours is scheduled, etc.

Below are some questions and answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about hours of work, followed by the actual contract lanuage.

I was hired as a full-time, forty-hour employee. Can my weekly hours be reduced below forty?
Yes. All full-time employees hired after April 1, 1992 may be scheduled to work from 30 to 40 hours per week (see Section A page 14).

Am I entitled to overtime pay?
Yes. You are entitled to overtime pay after 40 hours work in a week, or after 8 hours work in a day, or—if you are regularly scheduled to work at least 30 hours per week—on your 6th day of work in a week (see Sections B, C, D and E page 15). Special provisions apply to work on a Union holiday (see ARTICLE XII: HOLIDAYS, page 17 for details).

Do I have to work on Saturdays and/or Sundays?
Yes. All employees may be scheduled to work on Saturdays and/or Sundays, but there are very specific rules regarding such weekend work relating to pay, selection, and frequency (see Sections F and G page 15, and Sections H, I, and J page 16).

As a salesperson, can I be regularly scheduled to start work before the store opens or to end work after the store closes?
Yes. You can be regularly scheduled to either start or end work up to one half hour prior to store opening or one half hour after store closing, but not both. This includes Saturday and Sunday work (see Section L, page 16).

WHAT THE CONTRACT SAYS
ARTICLE X: HOURS OF WORK

SECTION A: The regular hours of work for all full-time employees hired prior to April 1, 1992 shall be forty (40) hours (except for the Stamford store selling personnel for whom the regular hours shall be thirty-seven and one-half (37-1/2) hours), five (5) days per week, not to exceed eight (8) hours in any one day, with one (1) unpaid meal period. The regular hours of work for all full-time employees hired on or after April 1, 1992 shall be thirty (30) to forty (40) hours, four (4) to five (5) days per week, as scheduled in advance by the Employer, not to exceed eight (8) hours in any one day, with one (1) unpaid meal period.

SECTION B: All employees shall, upon request of the Employer, work a reasonable amount of overtime. Overtime shall be distributed equitably among the employees in the affected groupings. Among non-selling employees, volunteers shall be solicited first. Non-selling employees shall not be required to work overtime on less than two (2) hours' notice for pre-shift overtime or post-shift overtime, except in emergency circumstances, and shall be excused from such overtime in the case of extenuating personal circumstances.

SECTION C: All employees shall receive overtime pay for hours in excess of forty (40) per week or eight (8) per day. Employees regularly scheduled to work thirty (30) or more hours in a week shall receive overtime for hours worked on days in excess of five (5) days per week.

SECTION D: Overtime pay shall be at the rate of one and one-half times the employee's straight-time hourly rate (i.e., Base Salary Rate for selling employees). There shall be no pyramiding of overtime or other premium pay.

SECTION E: Each selling employee shall be required to devote a reasonable amount of time to complete a sale if such employee is working on a sale at the close of the day. No employee shall receive overtime pay unless such overtime work shall have been previously authorized by the employee's manager or such overtime work is reasonably necessary to complete a sale while the employee is engaged with a customer.

SECTION F: Except as provided below for the Liberty Plaza store, Sunday work for regular full-time selling employees may be scheduled as a fifth (5th) day. Full-time selling employees regularly scheduled to work forty (40) hours per week shall receive eight (8) hours pay for up to eight (8) hours worked on a Sunday scheduled as a fifth (5th) day. Full-time selling employees regularly scheduled to work less than forty (40) hours per week shall receive one-fifth (1/5th) of their regularly scheduled weekly hours for up to such number of hours worked on a Sunday scheduled as a fifth (5th) day. If an employee subject to such Sunday pay guarantee is late for work, the following rules shall apply: (i) if the employee is late one-half (1/2) hour or less, the employee shall receive the guarantee less time late in fifteen (15) minute increments; (ii) on the first occurrence of lateness of more than one-half (1/2) hour, the guarantee shall be prorated based upon the amount of lateness compared to the employee's scheduled hours for the day; and (iii) on the second (2nd) or subsequent occurrence of lateness of more than one-half (1/2) hour, the employee shall lose the guarantee and be paid for actual hours worked.

SECTION G: No selling employee hired before April 1, 1994 who is regularly scheduled to work thirty (30) hours or more shall be mandatorily assigned to work more than twenty-six (26) Sundays per calendar year.

SECTION H: The Employer, in its discretion, may assign part-time, seasonal and temporary employees to work on Sundays. Thereafter, the order for assigning employees to work on Sundays shall be: i) volunteers among full-time selling employees in seniority order; ii) non-volunteers among full-time selling employees in inverse seniority order on a rotating basis.

SECTION I: In the Liberty Plaza store, any Sunday shall be scheduled and compensated as a sixth (6th) day for regular full-time hires prior to April 1, 1997. All other employees may be scheduled for Sundays as part of their regular week. Full-time selling employees scheduled to work Saturday as a fifth (5th) day shall receive the same pay guarantee as is applicable to Sunday work in other stores, as provided in Section F above. Employees hired prior to April 1, 2000 shall not be scheduled to work more than twenty-six (26) Saturdays per calendar year as a fifth (5th) day.

SECTION J: A full-time employee who works on a Sunday may elect to have a Saturday off, as designated by the Employer on either the preceding or following Saturday. Employees scheduled to take vacation shall not be scheduled to work on the Sunday immediately preceding or following their scheduled vacation.

SECTION K: Work schedules shall be posted at least two (2) weeks in advance.

SECTION L: Selling employees in all stores except Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue may be regularly scheduled to work outside of store selling hours, as follows: thirty (30) minutes before store opening or thirty (30) minutes after store closing, all days. The foregoing shall not affect the Employer's right to schedule selling employees to work outside of store selling hours during inventory.

Vacations, Personal Days and Holidays, Sick Leave

How do I know how much vacation time I'm entitled to? How many sick says do I get? What happens if I don't use all my vacation or sick days?

Article IX (Vacations) Article X (Holidays and Personal Days) and Article XIV (Sick Leave) of your collective bargaining agreement together contain many important provisions regarding compensated time off that are essential to know, and should be reviewed by everyone in order to ensure their full understanding.

We will not attempt in this posting to go into the details of each of each article. Instead we will discuss the common "USE EM OR LOSE EM" aspect of each.

ARTICLE IX: VACATIONS

Vacation entitlement is measured annually on the anniversary of your date of hire.

EXAMPLE:
Assume you are a regular full-time employee hired on November 23rd. Each ensuing November 23rd your vacation entitlement for the coming anniversary year is determined.

All full-time regular employees are entitled to carry over 1½ times their annual vacation entitlement from year to year. Any earned and unused vacation time in excess of 1½ times the employees annual vacation entitlement will be paid to the employee each July at the rate of 50% of the unused excess, and the employee's available vacation time will be reduced at that time to the maximum amount permitted to be carried over.

EXAMPLE:
Again using November 23rd as your hypothetical anniversary date of hire, let us assume that you have earned two weeks and two days (96 hours) of vacation time during the coming vacation year, and that last year you earned two weeks and two days (96 hours) of vacation that you did not use. You have now accumulated double your annual vacation entitlement, two weeks and two days (96 hours). You are only entitled to accrue 1½ times your annual vacation entitlement, in this case two weeks and two days (96 hours) plus one week and one day (48 hours). In July, if this is still the case, your accumulated vacation time will be reduced from four weeks and four days (192 hours) to three weeks and three days (144). You will have lost one week and one day (48 hours) of vacation time. The company will pay you for ½ of your lost vacation time, 24 hours.

The full text of the vacation language begins on page 10 of your contract.

ARTICLE X: HOLIDAYS AND PERSONAL DAYS

Your Union contract sets forth seven regular holidays for which eligible employees shall receive a day's pay. They are New Year's Day, Easter, Memorial Day July Fourth, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. If it is necessary for the store or a department to remain open on one of the listed holidays, eligible employees who work on that holiday shall be granted a "floating" holiday to be taken at a time mutually convenient to the employee's store manager or Department Manager.

If a paid holiday falls on an employee's regularly scheduled day off during the work week, the employee shall be entitled to receive a paid day off at a time mutually convenient to the employee, the Store Manager, or the employee's Department Manager.

All "floating" holidays must be taken within one (1) year from the date on which the holiday for which they are substituting occurs. If you don't use your "floating" holidays you will lose them, and there will be no payout for the "floating" holidays you lose.

The full text of the holiday/personal day language begins on page 11 of your contract.

ARTICLE XIV: SICK LEAVE

All regular full-time employees are eligible for sick leave. New employees become eligible on the first day of the month following 60 days of continuous employment.

All eligible employees will be credited with six (6) days of sick leave on January 1st of each year (pro-rated for new employees who start during the year).

There is no carryover of sick leave from one year to the next. All full-time employees will be paid 50% of the value of any sick days not used as of the immediately preceding December 31st.

The full text of the sick leave language begins on page 14 of your contract.

Holidays

What holidays am I entitled to? How much to I get paid for holidays? Can I be forced to work on a holiday?

We have received many calls regarding the scheduling and holiday pay provisions contained in the contract. Below is the article of the contract regarding holidays; the sections that address the questions we have been asked most often are highlights.

WHAT THE CONTRACT SAYS ARTICLE IX: HOLIDAYS

(A) Holidays shall be defined as including regular and personal holidays. All employees covered by this Agreement shall receive pay for the following regular holidays: New Year's Day, President's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Pay for these regular holidays shall be based on the average earnings of each employee for the preceding calendar year. In addition to the seven (7) regular holidays, each employee covered by this Agreement shall receive four (4) personal holidays in each contract year (April 1 through March 31). Such holidays are to be selected by the employee with a minimum of ten (10) days notice. The Employer is not required to grant personal holidays during the vacation black-out periods designated in Article VIII, Section G of this Agreement. Pay for the personal holidays shall be calculated in the same manner as sick pay. Unused personal holidays shall be paid to the employees at the end of such contract year.

Personal holidays may be used to observe religious holidays or Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, should the employee so desire. The employer shall have the right to grant personal holidays in accordance with seniority and its business needs. No restriction shall be placed on employees who observe obligatory religious holidays. It is further agreed that the Employer is not required to grant more than two (2) personal holidays at any one time.

(B) All employees shall receive pay for these holidays without any make-up.

(C) All employees shall receive pay at average for all other holidays upon which the stores are closed.

(D) To be eligible for holiday pay, an employee (i) must be employed thirty (30) days or more prior to the holiday, and (ii) must work the scheduled day before and the scheduled day after the holiday, unless satisfactory proof of illness or other good cause is provided. For personal holidays only, an employee must be employed for ninety (90) calendar days to be eligible. The four (4) personal days shall be pro-rated in an employee's first contract year of employment, based on an accrual of one (1) day per three (3) months of employment, measured from the first day of employment.

(E) In the event a holiday falls during a vacation period, the employee shall receive an extra day's pay, or an extra day added to the vacation period, at the employee's option.

(F) The Employer shall have the option to open its stores on the aforementioned holidays specified in Section (A). If the store of the Employer shall be opened for business on any of the aforesaid holidays, each employee working on such holiday shall receive time and a half for working said holiday, in addition to the regular holiday pay. All employees shall be paid for a full eight-hour (8) day on any of the aforesaid holidays, even though the stores of the Employer may not be open for the full eight (8) hours. It is understood that work on any of these holidays by an employee shall be purely on a voluntary basis. The Employer may establish its maximum staffing requirements for any holiday. The volunteers offered the opportunity to work on any holiday shall be selected in seniority order on a rotating, equitable basis.

(G) The current agreement regarding Easter Sunday will continue; i.e., so long as the company closes on Easter Sunday, post-1985 employees will be paid for the day unless their work schedule does not include Sunday scheduling.