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Wait, you guys are getting President’s Day off work??
Yeah, making election day a national holiday doesn’t help those of us who don’t get most holidays off.
Right. Congress would need to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to mandate that employers give national holidays off to employees for this to apply to everyone.
Maybe OP works at an elementary school 40 years ago.
Though somehow there’s usually a mattress sale.
Or a bank. Are banks ever actually open?
I’ve been getting it off for years. I know teachers do too, but I’m not a teacher.
Yes. Quite stupidly
Cuz America is a backwards ass country
Sure, here you go: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7329
One of many such bills.
Take a look at the sponsors. I’ll give you 1 guess at which party would vote it down, because it would hurt them in elections.
It’s the same reason Puerto Rico will never be a state.
Removed by mod
Good point, the real solution is to spread out the election and make voting easier, as in mail-in.
At least make it a sunday lol, a tuesday wtf?!!
how are federal holidays not mandatory time off dude there’s a reason they exist. what a backwards country.
edit: apparently the concept is so foreign that people don’t understand how these things work. of course there will be exceptions but of you work on a holiday you get a full day’s salary as overtime. this usually assures employers only force work when necessary because most would rather not pay extra. and of course further exceptions can be made into the law. no one said life should stop when there’s a holiday.
I work in a hospital. Unfortunately, people don’t stop being sick on holidays, so someone has to work. I don’t see how it could be different in any other country.
Black and white rules always end up fucking someone over. For example I work in the entertainment industry and a lot of my income is from working on holidays, specifically because they are holidays. That aspect of my job is not exploitative, and if the option were taken away I would have big problems.
We should just have elections on presidents day.
And that way presidents day finally has an actual purpose.
I’d feel weird voting for other stuff on a day called presidents Day now. Maybe we should add more days. Like governors day and mayors day. Oh and county comptroller day!!! We should have cookouts on that day also, obviously.
Because easy and accessible voting is extremely bad for one party.
In most civilized countries, voting takes place on weekends and your employer is legally obligated to let you leave work to go vote
Employees have to let you leave to vote.
They can also fire you the next day for a coincidentally unrelated reason, and unless you have 50k in lawyers retainers handy there’s not shit you can do about it
Depends on the state. In MN state law allows you take as much time as necessary to go vote with pay. I can’t remember when this was passed but I’m going to “Thanks Walz” anyways.
If only there existed, like, a club for workers where everyone pays a membership fee to cover each other’s legal costs and protect each other’s rights. We could call it a “togetherness” or something like that
If only…
Dudes working at most hourly lower end type jobs still wouldn’t get election day off, unless you mandated like octuple pay for anyone working that day (They should)
Like 95% of the US get neither off
In France elections are held on a Sunday so most people don’t work, the others are allowed time off to vote of course
Well in the US, no one was originally intended to vote but the male landed gentry, who clearly could afford to travel for several days to their polling place, get plastered on local liquor, and just shout who they were voting for at whomever was supposed to jot that down. Them that person would go off and vote for whoever they wanted, in case the peasants had gotten any silly ideas and voted for the wrong guy.
I think what you just described is the electoral college
The poor and desperate will vote less under the current conditions. It is all baked into the US cake. Wait until you realize that the US never passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Still waiting on those bastard laggard states to ratify it for nearly 50 years.
You are getting President’s Day off?
Why is it election day anyway, why not election month. California and Oregon have vote by mail; every state should
Washington State too. You’re right, the election isn’t just a day anymore - I voted more than a week ago.
The west coast, Vermont, and DC have all been mail voting for a long time. Hell, even Utah is via mail.
Early voting near me started last week, I made time this monday, wasn’t even a line when I got there. Early voting all this week from 7am-7pm. Why chance a long line on election day.
Meanwhile all the schools in my area are polling places so kids don’t have school.
We don’t get the day off to vote in MN but you are legally allowed to take time off to go vote (with pay). So when I was in the office, I always voted in the middle of the day right after my lunch hour.
Our boss just took us out to lunch and gave us four hours off the rest of the day to go out and vote, which is probably the most encouragement to vote I think I’ve ever gotten from any boss before. I’m sure I was entitled to it this whole time, but it’s never been encouraged like this before with this boss at any of my other workplaces, if anything, previous bosses probably would’ve talked shit if I said that’s what I wanted to do with my time.
