Pay for Holidays Under Compressed Work Schedules

The Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) administration of pay for holidays under the compressed and flexible work schedules experiment was examined. A compresssed work schedule is one in which the basic 80-hour biweekly work requirement is completed in less than 10 workdays. OPM implementing regulations provide that employees on a compressed work schedule receive pay for a holiday equal to pay for the number of hours they would ordinarily be required to work on that day. Thus, an employee on a 4-day workweek would receive 10 hours' holiday pay, and holidays occurring on an employee's nonworkday would be observed on the workday preceeding or succeeding that day. Those Federal employees participating in the compressed work schedule experiments would receive extra time off from work for each of the legal public holidays and their workweek would be reduced in the biweekly periods in which holidays occur. Employees on regular schedules and flexible schedules would not have reduced workweeks and would receive only 8 hours pay for holidays.