'They're working an extra day for free': Leap day's impact on employees - CTV News Kitchener | Canada News Media
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'They're working an extra day for free': Leap day's impact on employees – CTV News Kitchener

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Leap days may be good news for anyone who gets paid hourly. Not so much for some salaried workers.

Ryan Watkins, an employment lawyer with Whitten & Lublin Employment Lawyers,told CTV News thatemployees who are paid hourly are compensated for all actual hours worked. Salaried employees paid on a weekly or bi-weekly basis would also be paid for working on Feb. 29.

But it’s different for those paid monthly or semi-monthly — once on the 15th and once on the last day of the month. If employees work a leap day they would likely not be eligible for additional pay.

“Unless there is a stipulation in the employee’s employment contract that says that they get paid for this extra day, they’re not going to get paid,” Watkins explained. “Employers are kind of getting away scot-free.”

He said Canadian employers are saving lots of money from their salaried workers each leap day.

“They’re working an extra day for free, effectively,” Watkins added.

Why do we have a leap day?

Experts say without the leap day the timing of the seasons would all change.

“In just the span of 700 years, if we didn’t do this correction, the summer that we experience now in June, would actually have shifted all the way to December,” explained The Great Orbax, a science communicator with the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph, in a video posted online.

Orbax said it takes approximately 365 days and 6 hours for the Earth to complete one full orbit around the sun. But that would mean each year would have to start six hours late.

“Instead of changing our whole calendar, what we do is we save up those six hours, and every four years that makes 24 hours, and we tag on an extra day,” he explained in an interview with CTV News.

MORE: What could go wrong without leap years? More than you might think

But it’s even more complicated than that.

It actually takes the Earth 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds to fully orbit the sun.

Over four years we actually end up 45 minutes short.

MORE: Leap day mathematical breakdown

“But it works out well, because every 100 years we end up with a whole day extra, and we take that one away from what would otherwise have been a leap year,” Orbax explained.

That extra day is added every 400 years.

“This extra day accumulates pretty quickly and the reason that we do it is to keep our current calendar that we have now in line with what we picture the seasons to be.”

Orbax said fewer corrections would be needed if society followed a calendar based on the moon instead of the sun, but humans would still probably struggle to make the math work.

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Netflix’s subscriber growth slows as gains from password-sharing crackdown subside

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Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.

The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.

Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.

The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.

The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.

The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.

The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.

Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.

In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.

“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.

As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.

Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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