I had accrued 27 hours of vacation (8 hours = 1 shift) at my job. I was miserable at the job, so I filled out vacation requests per policy, the requests were ok'd by the general manager and sent to the main office with our weekly paperwork.

The work schedule indicated that I was on vacation...after my 3 days, I came back to work. After working 3 more days, I quit. On the last paycheck, I only received pay for the hours worked...not the vacation. I contacted the district manager, who said I don't have to be paid for the 3 vacation days (which had already been "used").

The owner refuses to pay me. Since these 3 days were taken (requested and ok'd per company policy), shouldn't I be paid for them?

There is nothing in VA law that requires you to be paid for those days.

Can you cite your sources? Which section of which law declares used (not accrued) vacation days separate from wages?

Thanks

There isn't a law to cite, because Virgina doesn't have any provisions for vacation payout.

is it not considered wages? if not, where is "wages" defined?

If the state of Virginia considered it wages, they would address it and they don't.

no...they would simply define wages, or say what wages consist of. Blah. Are you guys lawyers? I'm not just taking your word for it. Give a source. Dog collars aren't specifically stated to be property, but they are...because code puts them under the property label. Code will either say it is or isn't, and code doesn't say unavailable, already-taken-and-approved-per-policy vacation pay isn't wages.

and what about the fact that this against company policy, which states that accrued vacation is forfeited when you quit. Since I used them, and they weren't available for use again, they are not accrued.

no...they would simply define wages, or say what wages consist of. Blah. Are you guys lawyers? I'm not just taking your word for it. Give a source. Dog collars aren't specifically stated to be property, but they are...because code puts them under the property label. Code will either say it is or isn't, and code doesn't say unavailable, already-taken-and-approved-per-policy vacation pay isn't wages.You don't seem to get it. Virginia has no provisions within it's regulations that require an employer to payout any accured vacation and since they have no provision, there is no regulation, code, etc....

You got yourself an account suspension for that one, emoeven. See you in a few days.

Once and for all; the policy is legal because there is no law that makes it illegal. VA does not consider vacation time to be wages. Some states do. VA does not.

Take it up with your state legislature. We're only the messenger, here. We do not write the laws; we only tell you what they say. But feel free to pay an attorney to tell you the same thing.

Whoah, looks like there was a misunderstanding here... He's accrued 27 days vacation time. He used 3 days, so now he has 24 days accrued time. It sounds like most of the responses are to whether or not he was getting paid for those 24 days, but he wants to know if he has to be paid for the 3. Presumably, had he not quit, he would have been paid for them. I think this is illegal, as he took a paid vacation. He should NOT get the 24 days, but the 3 he used we USED and should be paid for, if I am not mistaken.

Whoa yourself, nemosomen. This post was four months ago. I'm sure the situation has been resolved by now. Please do not post to dead threads.

There is a full moon out.

For the sake of new members, the responses were from payroll professionals that know what the law says, and what the law does not say. It is their job.

Now I back out again. :)

This sort of thing tends to be very state specific. Just out of curiosity, I went over to the BNA payroll library (a paid library service) and asked it how many states have specific rules on paying vacation upon termination. I am coming up with 33 states, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. And if one were to read the actual rules, one would find that these 33 states have different specific rules on just what this means.

Virginia was not one of the states listed. This means that there is no external rule imposed by VA on the employer (plus no federal rule because this is something that the feds have never cared about). There could in theory be a company policy that rises to the level of legally enforceable contract. The problem with that is that company policies almost never rise to the level of legally enforceable contract. Contract law is worded in such a way to tend to prevent this. Still, anything is possible. The employee could always take a copy of the policy to a local attorney for review if they wanted to check that point.

FYI, there are 4 major paid payroll library services (APA, BNA, CCH, RIA). I found out in the 1980s whenever we paid our attorney or CPA firms for a payroll related legal opinion, nine times out of 10, they just went over to one of these services and copied the answer. Often as not they were too lazy to bother rephrasing the answer and just attached the photocopy (back in the bad old paper days) to the back of their letter. Lesson learned. I made a point of just subscribing to one of the services myself from that point on.

Sorry for losing my cool. Just wanted to return to this old thread to state that my gut feeling was correct...I got my USED vacation pay, on the grounds that my ex-boss was violating the corporate policy of the franchise where I worked, and that since I had used the vacation time(and it was unavailable for use), it was (either by the company or VA law...not sure) considered wages...not a job benefit. So the dude cut me a check in less than 24 hours. Woot.

Sorry for losing my cool. Just wanted to return to this old thread to state that my gut feeling was correct...I got my USED vacation pay, on the grounds that my ex-boss was violating the corporate policy of the franchise where I worked, and that since I had used the vacation time(and it was unavailable for use), it was (either by the company or VA law...not sure) considered wages...not a job benefit. So the dude cut me a check in less than 24 hours. Woot.

That was a company decision. The law did not and still does not unconditionally require vacation payout at termination.