Dear colleagues,

In my mind I know the answer to this, however various shop floor workers have made quite an issue about there being an additional day in the year, therefore are they getting additional pay?!

Background to this - we work an annualised hrs system, therefore shop floor are paid their annual hours divided by 12 equal installments per month.  Therefore in effect in a leap year they WOULD work an extra day.

We have had several very angry and indignant personnel in the office today stating they are not charity cases and wont work for free.

Can anyone let me know if you have come up against this this year at all?  All I thought I had to worry about in a leap year was the pressure of having to propose to my boyfriend....!

I'm sorry I didn't see this email before Feb 29th but if you are still facing employee unrest, you might want to explain that a leap year (Feb 29th) makes up 1/4 day for each of the other 3 'common' years which are approximated to keep the seasons inline with each passing year..

Therefore, it could be said that employees are overpaid by a 1/4 of a day per year for 3 years and a leap year corrects that balance.

I'm sorry I didn't see this email before Feb 29th but if you are still facing employee unrest, you might want to explain the following.

 A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

They are effectively working the 1/4 day that they don't work for the 3 common years between leap years.

You may also want to highlight that society isn't penalised for a leap-year, ie no additional 1 day car-tax duty, and so employers are not expected to act in kind.

Lastly, the number of working days per year will always vary according to the way weekends/shift patterns fall - so no one is out of pocket!

Good luck, sounds like you work with a bunch of militants!