10-hour holiday pay is OK

County workers who regularly work four 10-hour days may get 10 hours pay for public holidays if it’s negotiated as part of a collective bargaining agreement, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock has concluded.

Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan had asked for the opinion to clarify whether a collective-bargaining agreement between the county and workers who routinely work four 10-hour days a week could legally require the county to pay 10 hours, rather than the standard eight hours, for public holidays.

In Flathead County, roughly 45 employees in the Road and Bridge Department and 18 employees of the Solid Waste District routinely work the 4/10 work schedule, County Human Resource Director Raeann Campbell said.

Those employees will get retroactive holiday pay extending back to September 2009, Campbell said, adding that she doesn’t know yet what the total cost will be to issue the back pay.

 Bullock’s opinion found the practice is consistent with both the Montana Collective Bargaining for Public Employees Act and with previous Attorney General opinions.

 “Holiday pay is specifically identified as a subject of collective bargaining, since it relates both to the amount of compensation, i.e. ‘wages,’ that the employee receives, as well as to the ‘hours’ worked under a 4/10 work schedule,” Bullock said in the opinion.

 Since the question of accounting for holiday pay when a county employee works a 4/10 work week under a collective-bargaining agreement is not explicitly addressed by any state law, the opinion concludes that the county and public employees “are free to bargain collectively, and the public employer may abide by a resulting agreement that is otherwise lawful.”