My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: California
I work as an Executive Assistant. We have roughly 80 to 100 employees and about 14 Executive Assistants, we are all salaried employees. The entire office is salaried. During the Christmas holiday, the days between Tuesday, 12/26 to Friday, 12/29 the office is “unofficially” closed. The majority of the office is allowed to “work” from home (no one is working) during that week, with the exception of the EAs. Because they want someone to cover reception in case someone calls. They want two EAs per day to come into the empty office.
I worked last year, one shift, and no one called. It was a complete waste of time and I had to commute an hour to do nothing. I know that in the past they hired a temp to cover reception so the entire staff could enjoy the week off. But the old VP retired and a new one was hired. Unsure if this has anything to do with that b/c it was before my time at the company. They asked the EAs to volunteer but if no one volunteers they will pick and choose and assign the days to the EAs of their choosing, so as long as they aren’t taking an official vacation and using their vacation time.
If you don’t come in this particular week when the rest of the staff is allowed to be out of the office on the company’s dime and they are not using their vacation time, then they deducted vacation from the EAs who choose not the work a shift (they deduct the entire four days). We do not have an HR department! This sounds incredibly discriminatory and biased and unfair but are any labor/employment law being broken?

