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I had a situation at work that I have never encountered before.

In 2022, I took my vacation in June and got paid for it in the usual way. In 2023, I took my vacation in April, but I didn't get paid for it that week. I contacted the owner of the company and was told that if they paid me in April, I would be getting paid for two vacations within one year (i.e., within one twelve-month period), and that they wouldn't do that, but they would pay me for it in June.

According to the employee handbook, you can take your vacation at any time after the anniversary of the start date of your employment. There was no mention of being paid exactly twelve months later. (They may have changed that in more recent employee handbooks.)

Is this legal in the US?

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    An anniversary happens once a year. You don’t mention when your anniversary date is. Keep in mind your employer doesn’t have to approve your request. They indicated you essentially wouldn’t have leave until after June. Did they approve your leave in April? What ended up happening? Since this was over a year ago in 2023
    – Donald
    Commented Aug 11 at 19:19
  • @Donald Anniversary date is in January. They approved both vacations, but after the 2023 vacation they only told me after the fact that they wouldn't give me the vacation pay until June.
    – JoeB
    Commented Aug 11 at 21:06
  • So in June did they pay out your leave? You don’t mention what state. Employment laws vary state to state outside of those protected by federal statute.
    – Donald
    Commented Aug 11 at 21:17

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If your vacation accrual is indicted on your pay stubs, then you may have grounds to contact your state's department of labor (EDD in my home state) to make a complaint. In my state, vacation is considered as wages, and the state doesn't take kindly to employers arbitrarily withholding wages from employees. Your employer sounds like a real piece of work, inventing policies on the fly.

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  • L "Your employer sounds like a real piece of work, inventing policies on the fly." That's my impression of it.
    – JoeB
    Commented Aug 13 at 20:22
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    Your employer sounds like someone who wants legal trouble to me.
    – Questor
    Commented Aug 16 at 15:03
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Vacation accrual rules differ from company to company. In theory, you are given vacation progressively as you work through the year. That isn't necessarily a linear relationship; IBM used to heavily front load it with some odd effects on how much vacation you got during your first calendar year.

Normally, they hide this detail by letting you take vacation that you would earn this calendar year even if you haven't yet earned it. That is, if you get 2 weeks per year, they will let you take a week in February even though theoretically you won't earn all of those days until July. So there is some interesting bookkeeping being done to permit that.

However, also normally, if you are on salary they handle vacation by simply paying you your normal wage on the normal schedule, rather than having a separate arrangement for vacation pay.

If you are being paid hourly but still getting vacation, I honestly don't know what the norm is, or even if there is one. That is a fairly uncommon combination, at least in the United States.

But note that I did say "normally." It is possible that your company has a different set of policies on this. I would have hoped that they would make those policies very clear to you when hiring, and that they would be available in clearly written form upon request. So if they didn't give you a copy, ask for one; that should answer your question about whether this is how your company ordinarily handles things or not. It shouldn't be necessary to push very hard to get a copy; the company generally wants everyone to understand how this works.

It's perfectly reasonable to be surprised. But don't get annoyed, or worried, until you have seen whether they are, in fact, following their own rules. If they are, then just chalk it up as something to be aware of in the future; it's unexpected, and inconvenient for the employee planning a vacation, but if you get all the money in something resembling a reasonable amount of time that's all that really matters.

If they are doing something that disagrees with their own rules, and they don't have a good explanation for it, this may hint that they are having cash flow problems. If so, you might want to make sure your resume is ready in case they decide to close up shop.

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  • ". That is a fairly uncommon combination" ... Someone hasn't worked an hourly job in the USA. The way paid vacation typically works with an hourly job is that you earn PTO hours which are paid at your hourly rate.. Every hour of vacation uses 1 PTO hour. You typically spend an amount of PTO equal to the number of hours you would normally work that day (So if you typically work 5 hours a day, you spend 5 hours of PTO for each day off, etc...). That is how it worked at my manufacturing job, fast food job, janitorial job.... Only job that was different was summer jobs that didn't have PTO.
    – Questor
    Commented Aug 12 at 17:00
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    @Questor What you described has been my experience exactly, and directly applies to my question.
    – JoeB
    Commented Aug 12 at 23:15
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    It should be noted that the request 'please send me the detailed rules on vacation pay' should go to HR and not to OPs supervisor or the boss of the company.
    – quarague
    Commented Aug 13 at 2:18
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    I don't think I've run into a tradesman yet who works salary, with rare exception. I have worked as both hourly and salary in my field (Controls Engineering) and can tell you PTO policies differ, but the concept is the same for both. assuming an 8 hour day standard, you use 8 hours of PTO per day of paid time off. It's pretty much a wage replacement, and is paid in the same pay period as such. In the USA, not paying it out as used is the same as not paying out worked hours, and definitely a DOL concern.
    – GOATNine
    Commented Aug 14 at 15:02
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    @GOATNine, exactly... And in most parts of the USA not paying it out when an employee leaves is also considered wage theft, and a DOL concern. Which is why there are so many companies that have "unlimited" PTO...
    – Questor
    Commented Aug 15 at 15:05

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