In July, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors voted to make Juneteenth and Cesar Chavez Day official county holidays.
"Holidays like this, they're typically something that's reserved for bargaining negotiations and that hasn't happened here and I think this is absolutely indicative of what we call 'the Yolo way,' just doing the right thing for the right reason," County Administrative Officer Gerardo Pinedo said during the vote.
The move highlights just how different holiday rules can be depending on where you live or who you work for.
Starting next year, Yolo County will have 11 holidays, not counting the day after Thanksgiving. That matches the number of federal holidays, but the county and the federal government recognize different days. The state of California has 10 official holidays (plus the day after Thanksgiving), while neighboring Sacramento County has 13. The city of Sacramento, meanwhile, has 11.
And even with all the different holidays, there’s no guarantee Yolo or Sacramento County residents will actually get any of those days off.
As many workers across the United States prepare to celebrate Labor Day this weekend, here’s a look at how paid holidays work in California and what rights you have as a worker to take those days off.
Government holidays don't guarantee a day off for everyone
First off, let’s get this out of the way: In the United States, there are no guaranteed days that all workers get time off from work.
While the federal government has designated 11 days as holidays, for the most part, only workers for the federal government get those days off. The same goes for states, counties and cities, which can set their own holidays for their employees but which don’t cover private sector workers.
That means when Yolo County voted to add Juneteenth and Cesar Chavez Day, it only impacted people who worked for the county itself.
“It's only for employees who work for the county of Yolo because private sector employers decide to pay whatever holidays they want,” said Jennifer Shaw, a Sacramento-based employment law attorney and founder of the Shaw Law Group. “In fact, they could decide that they don't want to pay holidays at all.”
Shaw said that even applies to religious or cultural holidays, meaning an employer has no legal obligation to provide that time off. She said that’s why many employers, including the state of California, have started to use floating holidays that an employee can choose to take throughout the year.
Holidays can be recognized in different ways
Juneteenth — which commemorates June 19, 1865, the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned about the end of the Civil War — illustrates the different ways states can handle a single holiday.
The day was an official holiday in 28 states and at the federal level this year. But in California, it was an “observance” that workers could choose to take instead of a floating personal holiday. Some state workers are pushing to change that.
Locally, Yolo and Sacramento counties recognize the day for their workers, but the city of Sacramento does not. Neither do Placer or El Dorado counties.
And as Shaw noted, no matter what governments decide to do, those rules don’t apply to private companies.
“That's up to the employer, just like vacation is,” she said. “So the employer can decide, you have to work a year before you begin accruing vacation or you have to work for a year before you're eligible for holidays or any time employees are eligible for holidays and not part time. There's a lot of discretion on the private sector side of things.”
When workers are entitled to holiday pay
One area where workers do have protection is when they are a non-exempt employee — someone who is typically hourly and covered by overtime rules — and have to work on a holiday. In those cases, your employer would need to pay for both the promised holiday and the time worked.
“Some employers would take the position, ‘well, I didn't have to pay you the holiday because I paid you for the hours you worked,’” Shaw said. “But I've seen that blow up on a number of employers because the courts and the labor commissioner have said, ‘no, that's an agreement with your employee that you would give them a holiday.’”
So if you are one of the 79% of workers in the United States with some form of paid holiday, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or an employee of the federal government, state of California or Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado and Placer counties, which all recognize Labor Day, enjoy your day off Monday.
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