Before I got a job, I was always so hyped for the idea of serving on jury duty. But then I realized that I wouldn’t be compensated the same amount as if I was at work. While I could use PTO for it, then that means less PTO for fun stuff
Ya maybe a law to prevent financial loss should be passed where the employer has to pay? Mine gives a full day of pay for jury duty so none of my coworkers have a problem with it.
No one’s been picked though. Maybe lawyers aren’t fans of engineers?
Honestly I’m not sure why there isn’t a law for this already. Then more people from every income range would be willing to take part in a pretty crucial part of our judicial system. Right now, if you’re someone with bills or rent to pay and barely making it, even a one week trial could cause some damage.
Reddit is being weird and not letting me pull up profiles, but thank you so much for the award!!
Even if we had a law like that, there would still be a significant number of people that make less than minimum wage and rely on tips who would be burdened by jury duty. I'm all for it, I just wanted to mention that. Unfortunately the people most affected by losing a week's pay are the ones least likely to have employers cover wages when they miss work.
Didnt even think of that, good point! And I’m sure employers in tip based environments wouldn’t cover average tip amount unless mandated by a law. And I know there’d be plenty of lobbyists trying to prevent it- which sucks
Just write the law so reimbursement goes off of your last years income you wrote on your tax forms. It's stupid easy math to average that yearly pay out for a couple days. Would work the same for tips too.
No reason to let perfect be the enemy of good here. As a percentage of the workforce, tip reliant workers are a very small amount. And most of them work mostly in the evenings/weekends anyways.
So I strongly agree, my point was that even his proposal doesn't go far enough. 4 million workers are tip based, 2% of the work force. it isnt that small when we're talking about disrupting multiple days of pay for millions of Americans imo.
Right but PTO for tip based employees doesnt need to be minimum wage, and I'm sure this is how it would be managed for Jury Duty. The employer would give them like $3 an hour.
It does if the tips don't make up for it. The only time it's legal to reduce base pay below minimum wage is when the person is already making minimum wage through those tips, and if they ever drop below it for any of their shifts then they're legally required to bump that base pay back up for that shift
It is crazy! The silver lining to all of this is that you can petition that even being called for jury duty would cause financial hardship if your employer doesn’t pay for your time away. This can actually get you excused from jury duty.
My company will actually provide employees with letters when they are summoned that state jury duty would be considered unpaid time off for the employee. I haven’t seen it fail yet. But unfortunately, not every company will provide this level of documentation, especially in a timely manner
Right, this step would only be able to work prior to the actual court date. So it would need to be done as early as possible from the moment you receive the summons in the mail. This allows the admin office to file the letter from your employer and make a decision.
•
u/JacobJamesTrowbridge Jul 16 '26
Why does everyone hate jury duty? I like the idea of it. Sign me up, I wanna weigh up a case and make a fair decision, that shit sounds cool