I suppose this request should be qualified as one seeking general "meta-legal" informed conjecture, rather than practical legal advice in the strict sense. There are surely interested parties seeking the latter as I write.
>That said, I am
>not familiar with any federal statute that would make it illegal to force
>employees to take involuntary paid vacation. A couple of searches on related
>keywords failed to turn up any federal cases in the 9th Cir. that discussed
>the issue. The distinction between fractions of a week and weekly fractions
>of a month is the sort of formalism that federal courts frown upon. I note
>that no one is entitled to any vacation under federal law, as opposed to
>employment contract law.
Well, these are interesting tidbits, useful to know.
>What's the practical beef about forced paid
>avactions, anyway? Is it that you have to use of your vac time when Sun
>wants instead of when you want? --jks
Formally, "forced" is exactly as you put it. But the real substantive issue may be that the company is shutting down productive plant during the "vacation" period. In other words, "vacationing" employees would not be able to perform their jobs during that week if they were otherwise "not vacationing", i.e., if they were available to work.
So this may not be a "vacation", but a temporary layoff issue, and this may bring it under the purview of a different branch of Federal labor law (not to mention California). To rephrase the question: What does Federal law generally have to say about the temporary layoff of salaried employees?
Thanks for responding, -Brad Mayer