By Mary Deibel Scripps Howard News Service Computer experts who've spent years combating the Y2K computer glitch are eager to work New Year's weekend, but other employees who've drawn millennial duty also will draw premium pay for giving up a holiday that happens only once in a thousand years. At International Paper's Year 2000 command center in Memphis, Tenn., Stephen Schaefgen and his staff of 25 hope to see to it that global planning efforts to prevent the Y2K computer glitch come off without a hitch. We'll be working around the clock starting early Dec. 31 before the New Year arrives at 5 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time in England, after the date change clears Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe and heads for a five-hour hiatus over the Atlantic. Other employers will sweeten the pie for workers who have pulled duty on a holiday when most everyone else will be partying.
Rewards range from New Year's buffets to bonuses to double-time pay to compensatory time off.
Forty-seven percent of employers have adopted policies providing for overtime pay, extra time off or other inducements for workers who have been asked to be on site or standby New Year's weekend. Bonus pay will range from 5 percent to 25 percent of base pay, according to Mercer's survey, while 34 percent of employers who responded will provide lodging and 14 percent transportation. Some 96 percent also will provide meals for employees who work the New Year's weekend, up from only 49 percent who said they'd do so when they were polled in June. The center's cafeteria will stay open to feed employees, who will draw the pay differentials always owed those who work night or holiday shifts. New Year's whether it's a millennial milestone or not, but one thing they likely can bank on this year is generous gratuities on the parts of guests gathering for big-ticket evenings.