You have to be employed before you get furloughed.

if it means that you keep your job, then collect unemployment for that time and enjoy time with the family. it happended to with one job i had every few months we couldnt come to work for like a week bc of billing issues to the city, got a week of rest and took care of things that i could.

One of my friends works for Endeavor, a talent agency in Los Angeles. To save money, the company sometimes does not allow the mailroom workers to "clock in", effectively making them work for free. The employees don't refuse or display any kind of negative sentiments out of fear of being let go.

My county has imposed some furloughs...but they've got a $400 million budget deficit.

I understand the reasoning behind forced unpaid days off...but it's almost as if it's the calm before the storm. I think a lot of people see furloughs as the final step before a layoff, and that tends to get people worried. I wonder if a lot of people who actually stay home during the furloughs are job hunting, in case there really are layoffs.

I know MANY people at my place of employment would have gladly taken furloughs (especially in the less busy summer months) and the commensurate pay cuts to avoid the layoffs that occurred here this past spring. Many longtime employees lost jobs. People were volunteering to cut their hours, take a month or two w/o pay, etc. to save colleagues' jobs, but the suits were having none of it. Very sad.

Hillsborough County, Florida. Library services to be exact.

1 working week of Furlough so far. Not all at once, and rumors have that at least 2 of those days will be up to the employee(s). The other days will be Mondays after holidays.

I'm using that time to whore myself on craigslist tech support listings.

@yoni242: Yes, but that's a double edged sword, isn't it? You have a week-long furlough - would it look better for you to go to work anyway and be unpaid, or should you take the furlough as it was intended? If there are budget cuts and layoffs, and you're wondering whether you're at risk for being laid off, should you be going to work anyway?

@OminousG:

I should add that this is for the October 2009 to October 2010 budget year.
Commissioners have already warned us that 2010-2011 is not balanced yet, and there will be no holding back.

There isn't a "I'd be on furlough next week if I hadn't been part of the latest round of reductions" option, so I couldn't vote. Cessna's going down like... well, like a jet with two engine failures.

My last job took a sneaky route.

The summer Fridays policy there is that you work extra Mon-Thur, and then you get to take every other Friday off. It's basically a flex time arrangement that results in a couple of three-day weekends. Nice, right?

And my first summer there, everyone took their summer Fridays, and it was the thing to do. I left just before what would have been my second summer there, as I wanted to relocate.

But since then, they have failed to replace five positions (and in a thirty-person office, that's a lot) and angry Facebook updates from the former co-workers I was close to show me that now, they're working the extra, unpaid overtime Mon-Th... and still coming in on those "summer Fridays." As a "favor." "Just this once." Except that now they're all only taking like two Fridays in the whole summer...

The contractors at my account have been asked to work 32hrs each week instead of 40.

Kept us from letting them go, which is good since many of them are previous employees from the outsourcing.

@OdelettePenguin: That's illegal, and whistleblower laws mean that it's illegal for the company to retaliate against the employees for speaking up.

God, I forgot how hot Jessica Alba was in Idle Hands.

@ElizabethD:
Companies use the tough economic times to trim the fat - it's not just about cutting the headcount, they want to get rid of older, higher paid people.

Well, we have "furloughs" every year here...it's called summer vacation.

No furloughs here, but at my previous company they started forcing us to take vacation days so they could get them off their books. I'd probably work on a furlough day if I was worried about my job and didn't have anything better to do.

I'm actually getting more hours due to the number of positions that have been cut. I want to complain about the hugantic work load, but overtime is better than no time! Plus I still make enough free time for myself to be able to visit the consumerist so not all is bad.

I have six furlough days here. Go state government! Although I have to admit that everyone I've talked to has agreed that we'd rather take furlough days than get pay cuts or see any of our co-workers get laid off (myself included). Most of us are treating them like extra vacation days.

If only we could get our wonderful legislators to take furlough days too...

Something interesting to note about furloughs in 2009. If you are paid bi-weekly (not to be confused with twice monthly) you actually have 27 pay periods this year, one more than the normal 26 pay periods. I've heard of companies taking advantage of this and widely educating their employees about it. The savings are tremendous and the worker, if alerted well beforehand, doesn't suffer too greatly.

Explained -

[bit.ly]

I'm a university professor, and I've been hearing some about my colleagues getting "furlough days". But academia's weird: the job isn't exactly a 9-to-5, and just because the pay stops doesn't mean the job does. Someone might have a MWF schedule, which means they aren't necessarily facing students on Tuesday and might not even come into campus (unless they keep office hours), but they can't just turn off the job for that day: that's when they do research and prepare their Wednesday lectures. AFAICT, most furlough plans for academics are pretty raw deals to both the instructors and students: responsible instructors who care about the quality of their work still have to spend that day in prep, and the one thing which they probably do end up cutting is any services outside class they provide to students (office hours, etc.; some places, serving students on furlough days is explicitly forbidden).

@Grant Gannon: They must hope their employees are pretty dumb then. Just because you get paid one more time in this year doesn't mean you are actually getting paid a higher rate. I just means there are longer periods that you don't get paid the next year.

They've been threatening furlough days where I work ever since last year, but nothing so far. I could actually have used the time off (it was going to be the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas) so I kind of wish they'd done it. I'd love to trade a bit of pay for more time off. We've had a few layoffs, although I wasn't affected, and there's no telling when there'll be more. I think the CEO would prefer to lay people off than furlough, but he's got unions to deal with.

We're not really busy enough to have to come in on days off. The only people I could see coming in on a furlough day are the ones who like to create drama and overinflate the value of their positions. I think (hope) management can see through that, but really the bottom line is that I just don't know.

@OminousG: I work for a WI county and we all just took a pay cut equal to 6 days off for the rest of the fiscal year.

Similar situation here for 2010-2011. Our budget is as bad, if not worse, than it was for this year. Scary stuff. Lots of people looking for other jobs.

It's especially notable in Human Services where low pay is now lower pay and funding is becoming extremely tight for valuable community resources. Both the severity of reported cases and the waiting lists for programs that could help families are increasing.

I don't mind the furlough stuff so much. Sure, it sucks and I'll miss the money. I feel worse about the kids in the community. The abuse cases that made me cringe are a thing of the past -- people are FAR worse to their children in a recession.

We opted for desk sharing and forced (twist my arm, really) work from home opportunity. Our layoffs ended up being about 10% of our global staff... That's still a lot of people, but given that we are a bank it could have been a LOT worse.

@jackbishop: I realized very quickly that all of my professors, even if they were only teaching for six hours MWF, were pulling 50 hour workweeks because of office hours, administrative meetings, extracurricular club meetings and planning for the next day. Academia really does not pay professors enough, especially for the work they put into teaching, and the extras that they do because they want to connect with their students (thanks for all the cupcakes and candy, Prof. C!)

My sister is getting 2 furlough days a month forced upon her, as a state employee working for a University.

It's adding insult to injury- she already works a 60 hour week and is underpaid for her position. I doubt she'll actually work less- just get paid less. Too bad, as it's forcing her to think about a new job (and she's really, really good at what she does).

@yoni242: You may not be eligible for unemployment if it's just a week off though.

I think this country needs to look at the bigger picture.

Salaried employees are in fact indentured servants in which your hourly work does not equal pay.

The creation of salary work has circumvented much labor legislation.

Tell my why somebody shouldn't be paid per the hour they work? why is it that you can force somebody who is salary to work more than 8 hours in a day without compensation for it? or work more than 40 hours in a week without overtime?

Salary employees are often forced into working ridiculous hours without the benefit of being paid for them.

This country needs a labor reform in the worst way, we've allowed big businesses to control how we live by dictating what they will pay for and won't.

Sorry but i just get pissed about this.

I asked somebody who was getting furloughed if how they can take your money away from working if you aren't paid hourly. They shrugged. Because my argument would be what about the days I work more than 8 hours in a day? or the times you've asked me to work weekends?

If you're not hourly why furlough?

@squinko: And technically, you're not unemployed, just on unpaid leave.

Isn't working while not being paid illegal?

I also worry that even after the economy improves companies will try to keep going on the furloughs to save themselves money and further boost profits.

@OminousG: err, wtf is library services (and I ask that as a librarian)?

@pecan 3.14159265: I'm university staff (library) and I was talking to some of the adjunct professors at my school. There's really no way for them to take any furlough time - what are they going to do, just wander out of class a half hour early every Friday? They just take the pay cut and work normally.

I took a couple Fridays off, though. The library survived without me.

In order to keep up and stay under budget, my company has cut everyones salary by 8% for a 3 month period. Hopefully, they don't get used to it and keep it that way.

Furlough? I worked 30 hours of overtime in the last month... Of course my industry isn't hurting that bad.

We didn't furlough anyone but the top four executives took a 1/3 hit in compensation. It will accrue without interest until or if we are able to pay it.

@Geekybiker: Say what? I know I'm not getting paid at a higher rate. I'm just getting an extra pay check I'm a bi-weekly pay schedule. July is when my "27th" payment of the year comes. I'll get paid the 2nd, 16th and 30th. In a normal year, a bi-weekly paid employee gets paid 26 times, 10 months twice, 2 months thrice. In the pay leap year, it's 9 months twice, 3 months thrice. (For me it was January, July and December)

2010 will go back to 26 pay periods in year. It doesn't work out to where it's 27 then then 25. Best I can tell there are still 52 weeks in a year.

I work for the state of NC as a university employee and, so far, we've got a .5% paycut with 10 furlough hours as our "repayment for that." Don't get me started on how to take 10 hours and have it make sense, you have to pad it with vacation time, but the real kicker is that my own job is 100% privately funded by donations and not state funds. It's not a huge sum of money so I'm not that upset about it, but it's still fairly ridiculous.

IF it's a government agency, wouldn't this be business as usual as the employees at say the DMV can't tell when they are working because they so rarely are.

Or, such as the Child Services? Them not being there is a GOOD thing for all children and parents concerned for all the harm they cause.

@Skankingmike:

Yes, but we're not being furloughed are we? We're collecting our paychecks and actually working.

UCLA recently did a bunch of furloughs. Their version was to convert the 13 paid holidays to unpaid.

@HillSA23:
Our furlough, lack of cost of living pay increase increase, and the increase in health insurance equal a paycut of ~3.4% for hillsborough county employees.
@SarcasticDwarf:
everyone who works under the hcplc.org division.

In the private industry they just reduce pay but there is no extra time off for that reduction in pay.

@Ayarkay: Another university person here. And I mainly run a journal, which still has to go out and give subscribers their money's worth, so a furlough would just mean a pay cut for the same hours. Fortunately, I'm in fiscally responsible, solid and reliable Illinois, so I'm sure I've got nothing to fear. Oh, look, the tooth fairy!

@Cant_stop_the_rock:

And that is exactly what they did here, at least in my department, where people in their late 50s and early 60s were let go. These people were not ready to or planning to retire yet. In both cases they were the sole source of health and pension benefits for their spouses. Where's the AARP when you need them? They seem to be rolling over on this one; I go to their site but find little encouragement for people to pursue age discrimination claims in such cases.

@Etoiles:

Employers have staff over a barrel these days. It's awful. I've been told I may have to increase my hours but with no commensurate pay increase. Basically taking a 20% salary cut. Will try to fight this within the HR system if it happens, but I'm in no position to dictate deal-breakers in this economic climate; I need and want my job... kids to put through college etc.

@Snowblind:

To me, this seems like a much more humane solution than simply slashing entire positions from the payroll.

@TinkishDelight:

Nice to have the extra income. Sucks for workers who are "exempt" from earning overtime for extra work, like yours truly.

I need a furlough so I can finally learn how to properly pronounce "furlough".

Furloughs are almost always the wrong way to deal with a cash shortfall. The employees make or break your company and the morale hit along with the pay deduction of a furlough is a terrible thing.

We had 7 days where I work. Two were on holidays that we are usually paid for. The other 5 we were able to schedule. I took them off all together and did a side job. In about 10 hours of self-employment, I made as much as I would have in 40 hours with my employer.