Equal holiday for staff
Jul 13 2007
This question cuts across statute and contract law, best practice and potentially discriminatory issues. A statutory right to paid holidays (currently a minimum of 4 weeks per annum but due to increase to 4.8 weeks on 1st October 2007 and to 5.6 weeks on 1st April 2009) is contained in the Working Time Regulations 1998.
These Regulations are health and safety based. Consequently they forbid the payment to employees for holidays undertaken except for paying accrued holiday pay on leaving. The Regulations also state, “Take it or lose it,” effectively forbidding the carry over to the next holiday year. So someone not taking holidays and being paid for it is against the statutory regulations. (There is a provision in the changes to 4.8 weeks which allows the additional leave, i.e. the 0.8 of a week to be carried over each holiday providing both employer and employee agree and a minimum of 4 weeks must still be taken in each leave year.
It would probably be best for administrative simplicity not to agree to any carry over, but that is a decision for you to take. As a transitional measure the regulations will allow the payment in lieu of the additional 0.8 weeks leave until 1st April 2009 only.)
The TUC is unhappy about annual leave in general and has been lobbying for the Regulations to be changed to ensure that employees must take all of their holiday entitlement – at the moment this is not possible since the self-same Regulations forbid an employee from suffering a detriment which could include action by an employer against an employee if they do not take all/some of their leave.
Allowing one person to be paid and not others is a potential disaster waiting to happen. It poses the possibility of accusations of racism, sex discrimination et al if one person is treated more favourably than another. Treat everyone the same. “Manager’s discretion” should be severely restricted, ideally banned altogether, as it almost always favours some and disadvantages others.