Is Sunday Included in Salary When Last Working Day Falls on a Saturday? Seeking Advice

Respected Seniors,

I have a question. Kindly read the situation below. Suppose an employee's last working day of their notice period is on 19th Oct 2013, which is a Saturday. Will Sunday's salary be calculated as the person completed a full week? One employee in our organization has their last working day on 19th Oct 2013, which is a Saturday. Will Sunday's salary be calculated or not, considering we have Sunday paid in the 30-day salary calculation format?

Looking forward to your valuable reply.

Thanking You & Regards, Manjiri Aher

It will not be calculated as he is leaving before Sunday, so calculate his/her salary by considering the last working day. Things could have been different if it were Monday. However, in this case, it will not be applicable.

Regards,
Shreya Parikh (HR)

Such confusion is quite common. Please note that an employee is entitled to one paid day off after working for six days in a week.

Definition of an Employee

An employee is a person with whom there is an employee-employer relationship. A person, before accepting and signing the appointment letter, is not an employee but just a prospect/candidate. Similarly, an employee who has tendered resignation and served the notice period will not be an employee after the closure of office working hours on the last working day.

Eligibility for Salary

Therefore, a person is eligible for salary from their Date of Joining (regardless of the day they join) to their last working day (regardless of the leaving day). If the person's last working day is on Saturday, after the office closure on that day, they are no longer your employee, which means they are not eligible for Sunday's weekly paid off. On the other hand, if the person's last working day were, for instance, Monday, they would have been eligible for Sunday's paid off.

Hope this clarifies your doubt.

Regards

Apart from all the advice provided by the seniors, if the notice period were to end on the 20th of October, which falls on a Sunday, then the employee is entitled to payment for that Sunday even though they did not work, as it is their designated weekly day off.

Payment Calculation for Absences and Off-Days

You have a system of making payments for all calendar days. However, you have not mentioned how you calculate salary when the employee has not worked for the full month and has remained absent for certain days in that month. It is a little confusing when making payment for off-days such as Sunday. What happens when a person is absent on Saturday? Is the salary for Saturday and Sunday not paid, or is only Saturday not paid? In such a case, you must allow the salary for the last Sunday as well.

Regards, Adv. K. H. Kulkarni

If the notice period expires on Sunday, which is a weekly off, then his last working day will invariably be on Saturday. On that day, he can be relieved as no employee can be relieved on a holiday. In that event, the question arises as to how he is entitled to salary for Sunday as he will no longer be an employee on that day. However, he may be entitled to salary for Sunday if he is relieved on Monday at the commencement of employment hours. This is my interpretation.

Regards,
B. Saikumar

Sir, If you have gone through my update, I have written that the employee would be eligible to get the salary for Sunday, being a weekly off, even though he/she is relieved from the workplace on Saturday. Because if it had been any working day, the employee would be paid for that day.

Eligibility for Sunday Salary After Last Working Day

If you have gone through my update, I have written that the employee would be eligible to receive the salary for Sunday, even though he/she is relieved from the workplace on Saturday. This is because if it were any other working day, the employee would be paid for that day.

To be eligible for the salary for the weekly off, it is not merely necessary that an employee should have worked from Monday to Saturday, but they should also maintain their status as an employee on the employer's rolls on Sunday since a weekly off is only admissible to an employee. In the current situation, the employer-employee relationship was terminated on Saturday, and the individual is no longer an employee on Sunday. A weekly off is admissible to an employee, not to an ex-employee. This is my interpretation.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
HR & Labour Law Advisor

Sir, I do appreciate your post and fully agree with you. Here, the employee's last working date is the 19th, which is a Saturday by default, so the employee will not be entitled to Sunday as a weekly off. However, if the employee's last working day is on the 20th, i.e., Sunday, and the office is closed, the employee will be relieved on the next working day, i.e., Monday, where the employee is not required to work but formally relieved from his job. In that case, the employee is entitled to the pay for Sunday.

I hope that I have not said anything against your interpretation.

Saji, I believe Sai sir made the same point; the phrasing may have caused confusion. He means to say that in order to avail of Sunday's paid leave, the person should have worked in the previous week and should have been holding the employee's title. Additionally, he mentioned that since the employee-employer relation is terminated on Saturday, the employee is not eligible for Sunday's pay.

Hope the confusion is sorted. 

I have gone through this thread with interest, and as in the past, I appreciate your interpretation. However, I find your interpretation a bit narrow, and it appears as if the employer can wash his hands off once an employee ceases to be on the roll.

Allow me to elaborate. I have certain questions, not necessarily specific to the posted query.

1. If the employee-employer relationship gets severed, does it mean the employer can deny any due payment for which the employee is eligible? For example, if performance rewards for a particular month are calculated and given along with the salary in the next month—say on the 5th of the next month—then if some employees separate on, say the 30th/31st of that month (last working day of the month) and some separate on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of the next month. Now, can all these employees (or ex-employees) be denied that payment on the plea that since it will come on the 5th of the next month, and since they are no longer employees, they cannot be paid that amount as it is meant only for employees?

My Second Question

Is it not true that there is a concept of ARREAR payments of salaries, and in some good companies including PSUs, employees have been paid arrears even 5-6 years after their separation?

Q3. Leave Payment

If an employee has earned any leave, then why can salary not be paid to him in lieu of leave so earned? Any answers on these?

I think this is what happens when we don't consider that the monthly rate of salary is one that is "spread-over" the month, and start thinking in terms of "weekly wages" and the "concept of sandwich leave" which is prevalent in the US and the West. Trust me, an HR professional who is well-versed with the Indian HR system and that prevalent in PSUs or big private sector companies will hardly take a second to come out of the dilemma posed in this particular thread.

Warm regards.

It appears I am misunderstood. If one closely examines my interpretation, it does not deny any right to an ex-employee to claim any benefit that would have accrued to them during the existence of the employee-employer relationship or during their tenure as an employee. An ex-employee is indeed entitled to claim all those rights and benefits that would have accrued to them during their employment, even after they have left the employment. What I stated is that an ex-employee cannot claim any right or benefit that accrues to a serving employee but not to those who have left employment.

Example Case: Prashottambhai Keshavbhai Goyani

For example, in the case of Prashottambhai Keshavbhai Goyani, 2013 LLR 954 (Guj. HC), certain employees of a bank, upon their retirement, received gratuity computed at a rate stipulated under the Gratuity Scheme prevailing at the time of their retirement. After their retirement, the bank entered into a settlement on gratuity, enhancing the rate at which gratuity is to be computed for serving employees. The retired employees claimed the difference in gratuity, contending that they would be entitled to gratuity at the enhanced rate under the settlement. However, the High Court turned down their claim, holding that the revised benefit of gratuity under the settlement is applicable only to serving employees and not to retired employees.

Weekly Off Entitlement

In the instant case, the weekly off is admissible only to an "employee" either under relevant statutes or under standing orders/service rules, thereby mandating that a person must remain an employee on the date of the weekly off to be entitled to the benefit. This is a technical interpretation in tune with principles of administration and law.

In a nutshell, an ex-employee does not lose any right to any benefit that would have accrued to them during their employment, but not benefits that accrue only to serving employees after they have left employment. In the instant case, the other employees who continued in employment after the ex-employee left would very well enjoy the weekly off.

Of course, I am not against any employer granting the benefit of a weekly off as a goodwill gesture.

Hope this makes my position understood on the issue.

Regards,
B. Saikumar

Thank you for this response - it is thoroughly informative and useful. You are correct to say, with reference to your earlier comments, that you were misunderstood. The questions I put forward in my post were to arouse a spirit of inquiry and not to contradict your conclusion (which is absolutely correct). I have appreciated and agreed with your conclusion in the earlier posts. However, I was not convinced by the logic that was put forward earlier - that an ex-employee is not eligible or entitled to benefits accrued while he worked. In fact, my way of looking at the problem was entirely different!

A situation has been posed, then it has been unnecessarily complicated by putting forward theories of weekly-offs and entitlement, etc. Why should the matter be looked at in the light of the concept of Weekly Wages or weekly entitlement? By throwing in these irrelevant variables, the issue gets unnecessarily complicated, and the mind gets clouded.

In my opinion, instead of getting into these newly-"imported" concepts, if we go by the traditional aspect of salary administration and system, there is absolutely no dispute or complication. According to the established practices of Personnel Administration (HRM) in India, if a person separates on the 18th, he will get his salary up to the 18th; if he separates on the 19th, then he will get his salary up to the 19th; if it is on the 20th, he will get salary up to the 20th... and so on and so forth. This has been going on faultlessly for decades in Indian industries. You can verify this from any veteran HR professional!

This is exactly what you also concluded. A person separating on the 19th will get a salary up to the 19th of the month. (Any reward, award, incentive, or other payables can be given later on as arrears.) So, in fact, if you see, we both are saying the same thing! While you are looking at it from the legal angle, I am looking at it from the angle of the well-established system and procedure of salary administration.

Why unnecessarily introduce the concept of days of the week or weekly wages or whether to include or exclude the weekly off? This kind of system has come after the introduction of the 5-day week, the concept of sandwich leave which stipulates that if a person is on leave on Saturday or Monday, then he loses the salary of 3 days, which includes Sunday, etc. The tried, tested, and established system says - The DATE of separation (and not the DAY of the week of separation) is important. Thus there is no ambiguity here. If a person is separating on the 19th, he will get a salary up to the 19th; he cannot get the salary for the 20th; irrespective of whether the 19th is a Monday or Saturday.

I hope the above helps in simplifying the issue.

Warm regards.

I have carefully read your posts, and I am particularly referring to yesterday's post mentioning the case of Prashottambhai Keshavbhai Goyani's case, 2013 LLR 954 (Guj.HC). Frankly, this case has no relevance and application to the question at hand.

In Goyani's case, the past employees had claimed certain benefits such as enhanced gratuity. The question in this case was whether the enhancement so agreed is prospective in nature or has a retrospective application. The benefits were prospective in nature, and as such, the claim of past employees was rejected. It was not rejected because they were past employees. In short, had the agreement been made with retrospective effect, these past employees would have become entitled to the benefits. The enlarged definition of an employee under the Payment of Gratuity Act now covers a "Teacher," and due to its retrospective effect, past teachers can claim the gratuity. So, it is not that past employees cannot claim any benefit.

Under the above backdrop, how is the question of whether a Sunday is to be considered or not for calculating salary connected to the "past employee issue"? Since off-days are considered for payment, and when one works for 6 days in a week, obviously Sunday of that week is payable. His service standing terminated on Saturday does not deprive him of the salary of the adjoining Sunday.

This was just to clarify the position and nothing to lessen your point.

With regards,

Adv. K. H. Kulkarni

Dear Kishore Kulkarni,

Thanks for your response. It is nice that you have brought up the issue of the relevance of Goyani's case. At the outset, I would like to clarify that I did not say anywhere in my post that the enhanced gratuity was denied to the ex-employees because they were past employees. What I said was that the claim of the retired employees in Goyani's case was held inadmissible to them because the same was applicable to the serving employees but not to retired employees. There is a subtle difference between the two statements.

Secondly, I cited the case of Goyani more in the context of the examples quoted and queries raised by the learned member Mr. Rajkumar Hansdah in his post than in the context of 'weekly off' to be admissible to an ex-employee. In my reply to Mr. Rajkumar Hansdah in the context of his post, I said that an ex-employee cannot be deprived of his right to a benefit in every case. Explaining the circumstances under which an ex-employee is entitled to claim a benefit even after he leaves employment, I said that an ex-employee can claim a benefit if it accrued to him during his employment. It is in this context that I cited Goyani's case.

Now, limiting myself to the issue of the relevance of Goyani's case, I take the help of your own observation on the issue in your reply post to substantiate its relevance. You have stated that had the settlement been retrospective in its application, the retired employees too would have got the benefit of the enhanced gratuity. Now I would say that had the settlement been retrospective in its application, the benefit of enhanced gratuity would have been deemed to have accrued to the retired employees during their employment, and they would have been entitled to the enhanced gratuity even after their retirement. This is precisely what I said in my reply to Mr. Rajkumar Hansdah, and that's how Goyani's case is relevant. In other words, what Goyani's case conveys is that any benefit that accrues after an employee leaves the service and is applicable only to serving employees cannot be claimed by an ex-employee.

So far as the admissibility of 'weekly off' to an ex-employee is concerned, my line of interpretation is on a different footing, which I made abundantly clear in my posts. Even at the risk of repetition, I would like to say once again that the concept of 'weekly off' shall not be understood solely from the context of entitlement of an employee to wages on that day but from the rationale and spirit underlying such a concept. The concept of 'weekly off' is primarily meant to enable an employee a day's rest after six days of hectic work but without depriving him of wages for the said day, which is only secondary so that he turns up for work for the next six days thoroughly rejuvenated. Therefore, the concept implies that a person shall enjoy rest and remain in employment to work further.

If, for example, an employee expires on Saturday due to natural causes after reaching home from his workplace, then whether the deceased employee would be granted a 'weekly off' or whether his legal heirs would be granted 'weekly off' on Sunday. However, assuming in Goyani's case that the benefit of enhanced gratuity was made applicable with retrospective effect and one of the retired employees expired, his legal heirs would have been entitled to claim the benefit.

The precise point I would like to make is that one cannot use the same yardstick and logic to judge every case, and each case has its own logic and rationale which needs to be applied in that case.

Hope I have made myself understood.

Regards,
B. Saikumar
HR & Labour Law Advisor