By: Conner Williams Editor-in-Chief
Oregon law does not require that overtime pay be provided for individuals that work on Thanksgiving Day, according to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.
The discretion is left up to the business of whether or not to provide overtime pay for employees on national holidays.
And since many businesses begin their Black Friday promotional sales early on Thursday, this means that employees are working on Thanksgiving instead of being home with their families.
The bottom line is that if employees are going to be forced to work on a national holiday, they should be compensated additionally.
In Oregon, the rate of overtime pay is one and a half times the base rate of pay, but let’s take it one step further and say that employees working on national holidays should be paid twice their rate of pay.
Now, you may be wondering, “But if people could make twice as much money, wouldn’t they rather go to work instead?”
Not necessarily.
First, let’s assume a scenario in which an individual has a choice to work on a holiday or not. It then becomes a matter of personal preferences.
Economic theory says that people whom make higher wages already are more likely to stay home rather than work for increased wages, since they already make a lot of money in the first place.
That temporary increase in wages from the holiday pay will not affect their overall income as much as it would a person with a lower income.
In contrast, a person with a lower income is more likely to want to go to work if they will receive a higher rate of pay, because it actually got more expensive for them to stay home.
Think of it this way: an individual makes $10 an hour, and they can then make $20 an hour if they work on a holiday. That means that every hour they don’t work loses them $20 instead of $10, so they will be more likely to want to go to work since they already have a low rate of pay.
Dr. John Leadley, an economics professor at WOU, reiterated this notion.
“Sure, somebody might say ‘I’ll work on Thanksgiving and make more money, then [my family and I] will celebrate it another day,’ but it still comes down to preferences,” Leadley said.
But again, this is assuming that someone has the choice of working or not. Many people are forced to work on holidays for their base rate of pay or else they will lose their jobs.
This needs to change.
