Should an employer be required to pay an employee while s/he (the employee) is on jury duty? If so, for how many days of service should s/he be paid? Should it depend upon the revenue of the company and/or the number of people employed?
In my experience, most large companies (as well as the government in the case of government employees) pay their employees while they are on jury duty. This may be for patriotic reasons, but is more likely for political reasons. The larger and more well known a company is, the more likely it is to be featured (or in many cases “attacked”) by the mainstream news media. The public would not take kindly to a news story about someone who was unable to pay his/her rent because s/he was a good citizen and served on jury duty, but his/her large, wealthy, and famous employer refused to pay his/her salary during that time.
Having said that, although the law may vary from state to state, according to my informal research it seems as though employers are typically not required by law to pay employees during jury service. The matter is highly debatable, and in my opinion, gets complicated quickly. A person who does not like his/her job but knows that his/her full salary will continue during jury service may be tempted to lie during juror questioning in order to be selected for a major case that will take months to complete. There should be no monetary incentives for a person to get him/herself onto any case that s/he should not ethically be on due to biases or other reasons.
Another point to consider is that although jury duty is an extremely important part of the American justice system, it certainly does not seem fair to force a very small business (i.e., one with very few employees and/or one which takes in very little revenue) to pay a juror's salary while s/he serves on jury duty. If we did force such businesses to pay, there would have to be policies in place as to how may days of jury duty the employer should pay for, and what the threshold for this requirement is as far as number of employees in the business as well as revenue. Many small businesses might intentionally try to stay below such a threshold (and/or utilize other tactics) just as many businesses take the necessary steps to avoid the expenses of health insurance and other employee benefits.
Just as a person should not have any special incentives for fibbing his/her way onto a jury for a given case, a person should also not be “forced” to fib in order to get out of serving on a case because s/he is afraid that s/he will fall behind financially. It is a well known fact that a very significant percentage of American citizens (including the middle class) live paycheck-to-paycheck (if not day by day), and have little to no emergency funds on hand. These matters are revisited in the topic of how much people should be paid while on jury duty.
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Having said that, although the law may vary from state to state, according to my informal research it seems as though employers are typically not required by law to pay employees during jury service. The matter is highly debatable, and in my opinion, gets complicated quickly. A person who does not like his/her job but knows that his/her full salary will continue during jury service may be tempted to lie during juror questioning in order to be selected for a major case that will take months to complete. There should be no monetary incentives for a person to get him/herself onto any case that s/he should not ethically be on due to biases or other reasons.
Another point to consider is that although jury duty is an extremely important part of the American justice system, it certainly does not seem fair to force a very small business (i.e., one with very few employees and/or one which takes in very little revenue) to pay a juror's salary while s/he serves on jury duty. If we did force such businesses to pay, there would have to be policies in place as to how may days of jury duty the employer should pay for, and what the threshold for this requirement is as far as number of employees in the business as well as revenue. Many small businesses might intentionally try to stay below such a threshold (and/or utilize other tactics) just as many businesses take the necessary steps to avoid the expenses of health insurance and other employee benefits.
Just as a person should not have any special incentives for fibbing his/her way onto a jury for a given case, a person should also not be “forced” to fib in order to get out of serving on a case because s/he is afraid that s/he will fall behind financially. It is a well known fact that a very significant percentage of American citizens (including the middle class) live paycheck-to-paycheck (if not day by day), and have little to no emergency funds on hand. These matters are revisited in the topic of how much people should be paid while on jury duty.
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