They did just add 5 days to the holiday shutdown for contractors. They now return on Jan 11th.
Ouch. I haven't heard that yet. Why does that not surprise me. It only surprises me that they didn't further extend the employee's required time off.
The scary thing is that there are no contractors on my immediate team. Going up 3 levels of management and looking down, there are only 4 contractors in the entire org under a Sr Manger.
I remember the days of having to plan for a week's unpaid furlough & luckily they told me about it when I interviewed. They just didn't say that it might get extended beyond the one week, which it did most years. I was lucky in that it was only two to three extra days and not an extra week.
That's really odd to have people return to work on a Thurs after 2 weeks out. I'd be spending Thur & Fri just catching up on email and not bothering with getting any real work done.