July Fourth Holiday Equals a 4-Day Weekend for Many
Officially, Monday is just a regular day, business as usual. But wedged as it is between Sunday and the Tuesday holiday, it has become part of a de facto four-day weekend.
“It’s going to be a ghost town around here,” said Maria Martinez of the Santa Ana city clerk’s office.
Like most government operations, the clerk’s office will be open--but expect a skeleton crew, as many workers use personal holiday and vacation time to create a long weekend.
A survey conducted last fall indicated that only a fourth of the state’s companies would deem July 3 a paid holiday this year. But with a mushrooming number of workers deciding to take the day off anyway, more companies are opting to shut down, said Juan Garcia, research director for the Employers Group, a Los Angeles human resources association.
“I think it’s just practical business,” he said. “A lot of employees aren’t going to be overly productive on Monday.”
Garcia now estimates that at least half of the companies in California will close for the day.
Many retail and restaurant employees, of course, won’t get a break, as stores and eateries brace for holiday traffic.
“We always work,” said Maria Hernandez, assistant manager at Two for One Pizza Co. in Los Angeles. “It’s no big deal. We would love to close, but we probably won’t.”
Linda Alvarado, secretary for the school management services office of the Los Angeles Unified School District, also plans to be on duty.
Holidays do not always land on weekends or at the beginning or ending of weeks, she noted. “I’m used to it. That’s the way it’s always been,” she said.
“We have patients to take care of,” added Linda Dawson, an office manager at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Towers on the Westside, which will be open Monday. “That’s more important. We have to save lives.”
In most workplaces, however, it is easier for employers to be flexible these days because more of them now give workers personal days to take at their discretion. In fact, twice as many companies are giving workers three or more floating holidays in 2000 than in 1996, according to the Employers Group.
Further, a growing number of companies now offer a “pool of time” off, rather than a set amount for vacation or sick days, said Tom Grass with the Irvine office of Watson Wyatt Worldwide, an international management consulting firm.
“I think employers are generally becoming more flexible with their employees,” Grass said. “I think that sometimes employees are demanding it.”
And with unemployment rates hovering at record lows, nobody wants to look like Scrooge. That was evident as the holiday approached and companies began calling one another to compare plans.
Epicore Software in Irvine, which will be closed Monday, found that 60% of the high-technology companies it surveyed were also planning to shut down for the day.
For some, it seems to have been a tough call. The Irvine law firm Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison told employees just six days in advance that they would be off Monday. But one worker, who asked not to be identified, said the edict did not change her plans because she had already scratched Monday off the calendar.
“I had planned to take a vacation day. Are you kidding?” she said.
An extra day off will be especially welcome to some Mexican citizens living in California, as many head south of the border this weekend to cast votes in a neck-and-neck presidential election. Candidates have used TV spots, direct mail, newspaper advertisements and even Internet pitches to woo voters south for Sunday’s election.
Still, some people would rather be working. Employees of temporary agencies, for example, are being forced to lose a day’s pay on Monday. They can’t work when the office is closed, said Sonja Petrone of Abacus Staffing in Newport Beach.
“There’s not a one-day job that we can send everyone to,” she said. “They need the money to pay their bills, [but] they’re kind of out of luck.”
There are places where unexpected holidays seldom materialize--the county coroner’s office, for one.
“We don’t get any days off,” Deputy Leslie Meader said, laughing. “We’re here all the time, chained to our desks.”
* Times staff writer Jaimee Rose contributed to this story.
