Grizzlies Provide PTO to Employees to Vote During National, Local Elections

Brandon Dill/Associated Press

The Memphis Grizzlies will be offering paid time off to vote. 

The team announced in a statement that employees would be given the option to use PTO for local and national elections:

“We looked internally to understand what additional ways we could support all members of our organization, and recognized that under our current time off policy, staff may have to make a financial sacrifice in order to exercise their right to vote. Knowing fundamentally that change happens at the ballot box, we've created a new category of Paid Time Off (PTO) to be used specifically in order to vote so that during local and national elections our staff will never have to make a decision between voting or incurring a financial loss.”

According to the Pew Research Center, just “56 percent of the U.S. voting-age population” voted in the 2016 presidential election:

“The 55.7 percent VAP turnout in 2016 puts the U.S. behind most of its peers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), most of whose members are highly developed, democratic states. Looking at the most recent nationwide election in each OECD nation, the U.S. placed 26th out of 32 (current VAP estimates weren’t available for three countries).”

While some of that may come down to apathy—and voter suppression efforts also have an impact—getting to the ballot box for some people can be difficult given their work schedule. 

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Since Election Day is not a national holiday in the United States, some workers face difficulties getting out to vote. Measures like companies offering PTO on election days helps to combat that conflict. 

The move by the Grizzlies is a positive one, and it will be interesting to see if other NBA teams adopt it going further. 

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