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Nearly One-Third of Organizations Will Close For Business on Martin Luther King Day

NEWS RELEASE

Contacts:
Karen James Cody,
BNA - Press Contact

Washington, DC (January 5, 2006) – A growing minority of employers is making Martin Luther King Day a paid holiday, according to BNA's recent survey of holiday practices. This year, nearly a third of responding employers (31 percent) will give all or most workers a paid holiday on January 16, in observance of Dr. King's birthday. The 31 percent figure is in line with survey results from 2005 (26 percent), 2004 (29 percent) and 2003 (30 percent), but up noticeably from those reported in the 1990's (typically between 20 percent and 25 percent) and late 1980's (fewer than 20 percent). Martin Luther King Day became a national holiday in 1986.

Companies with union representation are more likely than their nonunion counterparts to grant holiday status to Martin Luther King Day. Fully 40 percent of unionized organizations have scheduled a paid day off on January 16, compared with 27 percent of nonunion establishments.

Manufacturing firms are far less likely to make Martin Luther King Day a paid holiday than are services/nonmanufacturing establishments and nonbusiness entities. Consistent with past years, just 5 percent of surveyed manufacturers will make January 16 a holiday for employees, compared with nearly one in four employers in the nonmanufacturing sector (23 percent) and more than half of nonbusiness entities (54 percent). The practice of granting “floating holidays” to employees (in lieu of companywide holidays) tends to be more common among manufacturers and may help to explain the very low figures reported by employers in the sector.

Larger organizations—those with 1,000 or more employees—are only marginally more likely to give workers paid time off on Martin Luther King Day than their smaller counterparts (35 percent versus 29 percent, respectively).

The Survey Sample: Human resources professionals from a cross-section of 184 U.S. employers responded to the Web-based Holiday Practices Survey between Oct. 12 and Oct. 28, 2005. Of these, 22 percent were manufacturing firms, 39 percent were nonmanufacturing companies, and 39 percent were nonbusiness entities such as health care facilities, educational institutions, and government agencies. Seventy-eight percent of the surveyed organizations employ fewer than 1,000 workers, while 22 percent have 1,000 or more employees.

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