ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601150067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on January 17, 1996.
The 735 Roanoke County employees who will collect pay for Jan. 8,
despite the county's being closed by the recent snowstorm, are salaried
workers. A story Sunday incorrectly described them as hourly employees.
Schoolchildren aren't the only ones whose spirits seem oddly warmed by the snow and cold. A handful of bosses, it seems, are of a mind to pay workers kept from their jobs by the storm.
While many hourly workers were told ``no work, no pay'' last week, full paychecks will go out at some Roanoke Valley companies.
``I don't feel like penalizing them for the weather,'' said Margaret Holdaway, co-owner of Rainbow Forest Water Co. in Roanoke, a small water utility serving part of south Botetourt County. She will pay her three-person office staff and one field employee for last Monday - the first workday after the blizzard - even though none of them worked.
Employers plan to pay snowbound employees, require them to use vacation or other paid leave, or not pay them, according to interviews with various companies and government agencies.
Some workers will get extra paid leave just for getting to work in spite of the storm, which had piled up 23 inches of snow by the time the workweek began Monday morning.
The question of who could get to work and who would get paid if they stayed home was asked from northern Georgia to Maine.
As a general rule, salaried workers collect their usual pay regardless of how many hours they work. But no employer has to pay hourly workers who don't show up - even if the business or government agency is closed, an area labor lawyer said.
Roanoke County is one employer paying its hourly employees even though they did not work. Though closed last Monday, the county is paying its 735 workers for that day. Only emergency personnel were told to show up, and they will be paid at a higher rate than normal.
The closing meant employees temporarily couldn't do their jobs, so it was only fair to pay them, county spokeswoman Anne Marie Green said.
``If you close the county, there's no place for the workers to work, anyway, so it's considered a holiday,'' Green said.
The Roanoke Times will pay its hourly workers for Monday even if they didn't show up for work. Debra Meade, human resources director, said travel was next to impossible, and the company wanted workers to think they could heed the plea of law enforcement and transportation officials to stay off the roads. Those newspaper hourly employees who missed further work after Monday because of the snow will have to use vacation or compensatory time to collect full pay, she said.
Valley Bank in Roanoke, which was closed Monday, went even further. In addition to paying its workers for Monday, when the bank branches were closed, it will pay employees who missed work Tuesday, when the bank was open, said President Guy W. Byrd Jr.
On the other end of the spectrum were employers such as Carilion Health System in Roanoke. Workers who didn't come to work Sunday and Monday because of the storm faced a decision: They could collect full pay only by using up earned personal leave.
That also was true for Carilion employees who were told to stay home because their departments were closed. Some employees were unhappy at being told not to come in and to use paid time off to be paid for that shift.
Any Carilion employee who missed further work after Monday also needed a supervisor's approval to use paid leave, because the absence might have disrupted staffing plans.
Carilion's policy was consistent for all workers. Even senior executives who didn't come to work during the snow had to take paid time off.
``We just don't pay people for not working,'' said Laura Land, senior vice president for human resources.
Manpower Inc., a temporary staffing firm and the nation's largest private employer, also told workers they could collect full pay only by expending vacation pay.
``We can't pay for a snow day,'' said district manager Ann Ward in Roanoke.
Yokohama Tire Corp. in Salem isn't paying workers who did not report. It is marking them absent; the plant stayed open. But managers will make a record of the absences for record-keeping only and won't discipline anyone.
One sure way of getting paid - even if snowbound - was to work from home. That's what Judy Tynan did. She is marketing director for Columbia Montgomery Regional Hospital.
``I have everything set up so that I can work from home. It's not really a hardship,'' she said. ``Sometimes, it's even better to be at home.''
Staff writers Sandra Brown Kelly and Mag Poff contributed to this story.
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