Twitter giving employees Election Day off

Twitter will make Election Day a paid holiday for its U.S. employees, the company announced Tuesday.

The company added that any employees who do not have time outside of working hours to vote in their country will be compensated for the time it takes to vote, according to The Associated Press. All employees responsible for election-related work, including those responsible for security, will continue working on the day, the company said.

“Given the importance of voting, going forward all national election voting days that take place on a weekday will be a paid day off. Since the U.S. presidential election falls on a work day (November 3), we will plan to close all U.S. offices on that day,” the company told employees in an internal memo shared with CNBC.

“For all other elections, if you do not have enough time outside of working hours to vote or your country doesn’t already have a process in place to address this, you should take the time you need to do so and you will be compensated for the time off,” the memo added.

The U.S. is currently one of the only western democracies that hold elections on weekdays, with 27 of the 36 member states in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development holding elections on weekends, while countries like South Korea and Israel hold their national elections on weekdays but have made them national holidays, according to 2018 research by the Pew Research Center.

The announcement comes a week after Uber announced that it would make election days “around the world” a paid holiday.  

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey previously announced the company would make Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the emancipation of formerly enslaved African Americans, a paid holiday, with several other companies following suit, including the NFL, Uber and Nike.