02C48: Surprise Holiday Complications

Thursday Leftovers

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 1076

Earlier tonight the government announced that tomorrow has been declared as a special non-working holiday. This after-hours announcement was released well after most offices had called it a day and you can feel the mad scramble as different HR departments try to figure out how to handle things. I'm part of the many operations folks waiting for DOLE to release the official pay rules for tomorrow and to answer the question if tomorrow is the Saturday holiday moved a day early or if it's an additional holiday by virtue of the wording of the declaration.

The holiday economics rationale doesn't justify the last-minute nature of this announcement. And this administration had already revised its own list of holidays for 2023 to create more long weekends but noticeably skipped the EDSA revolution anniversary. And to do this at the eleventh hour feels like a half-assed effort to be a bit more consistent and not overly petty. 

And it's also terribly inconsiderate for businesses that need to operate under such conditions. It's easy to say that we should all just be thankful for the day off work for most. But this also means tomorrow is no longer a banking day and many transactions won't get processed until Monday. The wording of the declaration is still a little vague and as of the time of this blog post, the Department of Labor hasn't formally announced the pay rules for tomorrow's holiday.

Personally, tomorrow is supposed to be our payday since our regular pay day falls on the weekend. I go through a lot of effort to make sure we always get our people paid either on or before our scheduled paydays and this means paying out a little earlier when pay days fall on holidays or weekends. Now I'm a little stressed that approving our payroll tomorrow won't result in people getting credited before the weekend - it really depends on how Unionbank handles payroll operations on weekends and holidays, which is something I've never had to test because of my aforementioned practice.

So let's see how tomorrow goes. Fingers and toes crossed, everyone. 

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