Although 99 percent of employers are giving employees paid time off for Thanksgiving Day, 36 percent of employers say they're requiring that at least a few employees work during the holiday weekend, according to the latest Bloomberg BNA survey of year-end holiday practices.
This marks a slight increase over the past three years at 29 percent in 2011 and 2010 and 28 percent in 2009; however, Thanksgiving work shifts were more common a decade or longer ago. In fact, nearly half of respondents required some employees to come in to work in 2002 on Thanksgiving Day. Fewer respondents reporting distributing Thanksgiving gifts since the mid-2000s, but approximately one in 10 respondents, particularly among the manufacturing sector, still practice this.
Paid time off for Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving is being offered by 93 percent of respondents while 69 percent of respondents from nonmanufacturing companies are doing the same and 65 percent of respondents from nonbusiness companies are allowing those days as paid time off.
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Among respondents with fewer than 1,000 employees, 81 percent are offering paid days off for Thanksgiving while this figure drops to 56 percent for respondents at companies with workers at less than three-fifths of larger organizations. On Thanksgiving, 5 percent of respondents say production staff will be working Thanksgiving while 9 percent of respondents say some professional staff must be in the office. Meanwhile, 16 percent of respondents in the security and public safety sectors say employees are to work Thanksgiving, and 15 percent in the service and maintenance sectors are requiring the same. Another 13 percent of respondents say they will have technicians working on Thanksgiving.
Of respondents requiring Thanksgiving shifts, only 9 percent say they are not offering extra pay or compensatory time off. More than half of the respondents that are requiring holiday work plan to offer overtime pay, and 22 percent of respondents say they plan to pay double-time to workers on Thanksgiving shifts.
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