Court Opinion

ID: 9671348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:34:55.576627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:09.442877
License: Public Domain

Holbrook, P. J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). It is with reluctance that this writer adds anything to the excellently-written opinion of Judge Kelley. The reason for the expression of views herein is based not upon a desire to depart from construing the Workmen’s Compensation Act liberally for the benefit of the claimant herein, but because it is difficult to visualize holiday pay and vacation pay as pay in addition to the weekly earnings of the claimant.
Now it is true, as Judge Kelley points out in his well-written opinion, that the company set aside $2.68 per week for holiday and vacation pay for the plaintiff herein. However, this was not like the pension fund or insurance fund which was set aside every week in addition to the weekly pay for the benefit of the claimant. The $2.68 per week was set aside to allow the claimant to have certain holidays and vacation days off from work and still to be paid *260the regular weekly pay. The wages paid to the claimant, as this writer understands it, were on the basis of 40 hours per week at the hourly rate. This is for the period of 52 weeks each year and in the event there was a holiday in one of the weeks, the plaintiff would be paid for five days, although she would only be working four days. Likewise, during the week that she was on vacation when the shop was shut down, the $2.68 that had been set aside each week during the year would be used to take care of paying her for this vacation time off.1 Such arrangements are commendable whether by contract or by voluntary arrangement between the employer and the employees in the interests of providing a good relationship. The employer benefits from this good relationship but it does not pay the employee any more than 52 weeks of pay. In other words, the claimant does have holidays and vacation time off from work. If the claimant worked on the holidays for the employer or on the vacation time off for the employer, then this writer could say that it should be included as the majority opinion does so include it. However, the arrangement does not provide for double pay during the holiday time off or double pay during vacation time off, and in the absence of such an arrangement, this writer is constrained to dissent from that part of the prevailing opinion of adding $2.68 per week to the base pay to figure compensation payments under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. This writer concurs completely with the balance of the decision contained in the prevailing opinion.

 This practice does not increase the employer’s gross amount of employees’ wages based on the weekly rate. However, if we add the $2.68 per week to the actual wages paid, we would in effect add wages that were not actually paid. The other benefits considered in the majority opinion as being included as wages (to which this writer concurs), i.e., insurance and pension benefits, were actually paid out by the employer in addition to the employee’s wages.