The year 2024 has one more day, Thursday February 29. You can think of it as an extra day to live, but since it falls in the middle of the week, it’s a working day and it’s also eight hours more work for most people. Free work or not? It depends.
“That’s a funny question, one that I’ve never been asked before,” says Anna Potvin, compensation specialist and partner at the Normandin Beaudry firm. His short answer: it depends on the method of remuneration.
Workers are paid in two main ways, hourly or annually. For workers paid by the hour, it’s quite simple: every hour worked must be paid. As the year 2024 will have eight more working hours than a normal year, the annual salary will be higher.
This is what the Labor Standards Act, which does not provide anything special for leap years. The additional day in February is, however, important in the calculation of vacation pay, according to the Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST), which specifies that this calculation is done based on the salary earned in the year and must take into account the hours over 2024.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Often, professionals, executives and managers do not count their hours and their salary takes this availability into account. A day of unpaid work therefore goes unnoticed.
A donation to the boss?
Those who are paid on an annual basis find themselves working an extra day for the same salary since there is an extra day during a leap year. This is also the case for weekly paid workers.
Working for free, is that possible? In theory yes, but for most employees who have an annual salary, it doesn’t matter that much. “These are often professionals, executives and managers who do not count their hours and whose salary takes this availability into account,” says Louise Overbeek, who teaches in the accounting sciences department at HEC Montréal.
She herself has always been paid on an annual basis by her employers, without the idea of having to work for free for one day every four years ever having occurred to her. An annual salary for work comes with a certain autonomy in time management, she says. “If the employee cannot go to work because there is a snowstorm, their salary is not reduced,” she explains.
The world of work is changing, believes Louise Overbeek. “More and more, we are asked to do a task and we organize ourselves to do it. With teleworking, employees saved a lot of time, sometimes two hours a day, she says, and their salaries remained the same. »
Anna Potvin, for her part, emphasizes that professionals, executives and managers who have annual remuneration are most often employees who have access to bonuses.
“They have goals to achieve and they can see things differently. It gives them one more day to achieve their goals. »
That’s one way of looking at things. On the other hand, we can estimate that working an extra day without being paid still represents a lot of money.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
In Quebec, a third of the almost 4 million workers receive annual remuneration, according to Statistics Canada.
The year which has 52.18 weeks
In Quebec, a third of the almost 4 million workers receive annual remuneration, according to Statistics Canada. These are 1.3 million people who, taking as an indication an average hourly remuneration of $40, give up more than 400 million dollars. That’s about $320 per worker.
If there are employees who are wondering whether or not they will work for free on February 29, there are others who have never had to ask themselves the question. In Quebec, public service employees protected themselves against this eventuality several decades ago.
Workers who are members of the Union Common Front and who have just concluded an employment contract with the government receive annual remuneration based on a year that counts… 52.18 weeks.
This is, you guessed it, to take into account that once every four years, a day of work is added. Day worked, day paid!
A leap year, what for?
Once every four years, a day is added to the year to reflect the fact that the Earth does not take 365 days to complete one rotation around the Sun, but rather 365.242199 days. Adding a day aligns the calendar year with the solar calendar. A gap persists, but it is estimated at the equivalent of three days in ten thousand years.
The practice has existed since the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar at the end of the 16th century.e century. The day is added in February, the shortest month in this calendar.