Would this make Jury Duty better for you?

[tvguy]

County is Northern California raising Juror pay to $100 a day.

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/...cle_27dd71aa-6b05-11ef-9a74-4391be8591df.html

 

[soccerdad72]

Wouldn't matter to me. It's not about the pay (or lack of).

 

[sam_gordon]

How about just requiring businesses to:
1) Release workers for jury duty
2) Pay people their normal, working rate while on jury duty.

How this would work for small business owners I don't know.

 

[kdonnel]

I love jury duty, but I have always had an employer that continues to pay me my normal pay and lets me keep the token amount paid to the juror.

 

[Meriweather]

I don't mind jury duty......if it isn't too far away.

 

[EACarlson]

Would be irrelevant to me. My employer pays me my regular wage while on jury duty but any stipend has to be turned over to them. I can see this helping in some cases. A better solution would be for the government to pay the average daily wage for their jurisdiction. Forcing employers to pay for more government boondoggles is not a solution.

 

[Skippy918]

My employer pays me as well but it would help those serving who are unemployed or retired. I got a whopping $5 when I went to jury duty. It didn’t cover the parking fee. I had to circle the block to find street parking. A dedicated parking lot would have been nice.

 

[sam_gordon]

Would be irrelevant to me. My employer pays me my regular wage while on jury duty but any stipend has to be turned over to them. I can see this helping in some cases. A better solution would be for the government to pay the average daily wage for their jurisdiction. Forcing employers to pay for more government boondoggles is not a solution.

Jury duty is a "government boondoggle"?

 

[Smugpugmug]

Wouldn't matter to me. I don't like doing jury duty regardless of the pay.

When I was summoned 2 years ago, other people were jumping through hoops to get excused. None of us wanted to be there.

 

[EACarlson]

Jury duty is a "government boondoggle"?

Forcing private enterprise to pay employees when they are being prevented from working by the government is a boondoggle.

 

[Kitty 34]

I enjoyed the several times I went in and once even being on a jury so the pay wouldn't have mattered much.

 

[tinkerbellandpeterpan]

While I see a lot of issues with that, it would be helpful since I don't get paid during jury duty. They provide $15/day which doesn't cover either parking or taking public transportation per day. That's a problem.

 

[georgina]

While I see a lot of issues with that, it would be helpful since I don't get paid during jury duty. They provide $15/day which doesn't cover either parking or taking public transportation per day. That's a problem.

My city recently raised jury duty pay to $50/day for the reason that the old pay didn't even cover parking.

 

[tvguy]

How about just requiring businesses to:
1) Release workers for jury duty
2) Pay people their normal, working rate while on jury duty.

How this would work for small business owners I don't know.

I'm in California so employers HAVE to release workers for Jury Duty.
Judges here can also be very hard on employers who don't pay their workers. Not legally required, but I worked in TV stations and the bad publicity would not be welcome because Judges in the past had "tipped" the newspaper that a certain TV station had refused to pay an employee on Jury Duty

 

[tvguy]

While I see a lot of issues with that, it would be helpful since I don't get paid during jury duty. They provide $15/day which doesn't cover either parking or taking public transportation per day. That's a problem.

We're lucky here, we get mileage for every day except the first day of Jury Duty. And if you ride public transit, if you turn in your bus pass, they will give you another for free.

 

[TwoMisfits]

I'd prefer a parking pass into an assigned lot and a coffee/water/lunch stipend (going rate for the area of duty).

Around here, if you gave the parking pass free, $35/day would cover the daily meal and beverage need.
If you didn't, you'd probably need $70/day.

Forget a "payment" - and this way, everyone still gets the same for the duty.

 

[Disneefun]

It doesn't matter to me, but for people whose employers don't pay them for the time, it might make some difference. If you make $10/hour, that's like getting paid for a ten hour day. But if you make $20/hour, it's still a big cut to your wage. I had to do it last year and got $15/day. By the time I paid for lunch and gas to the courthouse that was 45min from my house, and then paid taxes on it at the end of the year, I essentially made $0. Possibly took a loss. At least parking was free, but if it wasn't, or I had to take public transport, for sure I'd have been deep in the negative.

You can't blame people for not wanting to do it at those rates. Especially knowing there's a chance they'll get sucked into a multi-day trial and multiple days of lost income. I think it needs to be a law that employers must pay for jury duty time, at your regular wage. (Fine if they want to require proof, just make the courts give out notes.) I also think they should do something about child care, because I know too many people (many of them single mothers) with jobs that go from like 7 - 3 so they can take their kids in and pick them up. Courts go until 5, so they struggle when things like jury duty get flung at them.

 

[georgina]

I'd prefer a parking pass into an assigned lot and a coffee/water/lunch stipend (going rate for the area of duty).

Around here, if you gave the parking pass free, $35/day would cover the daily meal and beverage need.
If you didn't, you'd probably need $70/day.

Forget a "payment" - and this way, everyone still gets the same for the duty.

As someone who walked to the courthouse and brought my lunch, I'll take the daily pay! After sitting through an extremely boring civil case for a week, we deserved it. And they structured it so it wasn't taxable.

Seeing the above post, I do think lack of child care availability should be a good reason to be excused from jury duty.

 

[bcla]

Shasta County has a lot more serious problems than getting people to go to jury duty.

 

[bcla]

How about just requiring businesses to:
1) Release workers for jury duty
2) Pay people their normal, working rate while on jury duty.

How this would work for small business owners I don't know.

The first one is generally a requirment in most state laws. It absolutely is in California. The second is another matter. My employers typically did pay or at least paid a differential. I've actually served on jury duty while employed, and while I was allowed to keep any mileage (which I didn't qualify for since I lived less than 25 miles from the courthouse) I was supposed to decline any jury pay. Some employers just pay the difference, although it can be tricky when it's someone who works inconsistent hours/part-time or who is in a job that gets tips.

I do remember my last time on jury duty when several prospective jurors were trying to get out of it by claiming that they believed that they stood a good chance of being fired or where some claimed they were irreplaceable at work. The judge wouldn't have any of it. He made it clear that if anyone was punished or fired, he should be informed. I think he would have gone so far as to issue a bench warrant for any manager or HR director who fired an employee and march that person right into the courtroom. It might even be a crime to make such a threat. It's certainly a violation of the law of most states as well as federal law.