Are companies that don’t give their employees MLK Day off inherently racist?
No
It’s also Lee’s birthday and celebrated as such in some states. Interestingly.
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Racially insensitive? The same question could be asked about Juneteenth, where there is obviously less tradition of many employers giving that day off. Going forward, a company that gives neither day off is showing poor judgment IMO. OTOH, many employees (and employers?) are motivated more by when the day is than by why the day is.
Are companies that don’t give Yom Kippur off antisemitic?
The answer to both is no. My current company gives mlk. My prior company didn’t, but we got more vacation days to use as we saw fit. So if you wanted to take mlk as one, go right ahead.
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Yeah most people are all w00t! 3 day weekend! rather than using this day to think deeply about mlk
I’m not sure why not taking a day off to honor an individual would be considered “racist”.
Why would a company give any particular day off to all of its employees given that for most companies, they have customer obligations to honor everyday?
Add on to that the usual state law/regulations that require a company to pay its employees time-and-a-half for working on a “company holiday”, what is the incentive for the company to add a holiday to its list of federal holidays?
I’m in favor of abolishing all company holidays and just giving everyone a bank of days to use at their discretion (e.g. personal days) that don’t require manager approval to take, so separate from traditional PTO.
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No, I don’t think so. Would rather get a free personal day honestly. Having a day off in January is kind of pointless. Nothing to do except freeze.
You’ll likely get push back from hourly employees, though.
Because they can’t make time and a half, you mean?
even if they get more vacation days in exchange? why?
it’s time off that i see as the issue here. if you have more flexibility that’s fine. although, one thing i like about having designated holidays is that i’m more likely to take them off and if given more vacation days, more likely to just not use them. we can’t carry over days.
Yeah probably. I would vote in favor of having that day off. Most companies I worked for have a couple of floaters for religious stuff tho.
I suspect there would be few people who wanted to work on all the major US federal/bank holidays and they’d probably still need to offer time and a half to get people to work those days.
I worked at a place that didn’t give the day after Thanksgiving off, for a while. They gave more personal days instead.
Most people still took it off, but I didn’t, and it was a nice day to work, especially when the alternative was spending time with the dreaded in-laws.
We celebrate Christmas on the 24th, which is sometimes a company holiday and sometimes not depending on when in the week the 25th falls. I’d prefer to work on the 25th and take off the 24th. Most people would still probably take off the 25th. But the flexibility would be nice.
yeah, we have floaters to use for religioius days. sometimes i use them. sometimes not. last year i didn’t because i was really busy on yom kippur and the temple i normally went to with my mother and sister was closed to outsiders due to covid anyway.
Pimai is when companies really need to be giving people time off tho
It’s the value of the time they actually spend working while still getting a day off. It’s just that their “day off” isn’t the actual holiday.
i’m not sure what you’re saying here. 
Is it still? I knew it was in Alabama in the early 90’s. But now?