Under what circumstances must a local government employer pay “holiday pay?”

Neither federal law nor state law requires local government employers to give employees paid holidays or to pay a premium when employees must work on what would otherwise be a holiday. Local governments may adopt a policy of paying double time or some other sort of bonus for working a holiday shift if they wish to do so, but the federal FLSA does not mandate anything with respect to holidays other than that the employer pay straight time for the first 40 hours worked in a given workweek and overtime for hours in excess of 40. For law enforcement employees under the 207(k) exemption, straight time must be paid for the first 171 hours, regardless of whether or not any of those hours fall on a holiday, and time-and-one-half overtime paid for hours over 171, again holiday or not. In other words, legally, holidays do not have to be treated any differently than any other work day.