In light of the recent court case of Harpur Trust v Brazel, which was heard in the Supreme Court, you may have some questions surrounding the outcome of the judgement and what this means in terms of paid holiday days for employees who have irregular working hours or for part-year workers.
Why Does The Decision Made In The Supreme Court Matter?
The ruling establishes the right to 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday for all employees that are considered as part year workers as well as any employees that are kept on a continuous schedule.
In order to take into consideration part-year agreements and contracts, employers will now not be permitted to cut statutory vacation entitlements based on an annual basis. This implies that part-year as well as term-time employees could well be entitled to substantially more holiday leave than full-time employees.
Who Does The Judgement Affect?
The judgement will affect both employees and workers that are contracted through the course of the calendar year as well as where both below are applicable:
- Employees will work for only a portion of the year(only term-time). As well as this, the employee salary will be solely based upon the weeks worked and where their holiday days are calculated via pro-rata.
– Employees who have irregular working hours and so their holiday days have been implementing the 12.07% multiplier in order to calculate their entitlement.
Employees or workers who are compensated on a yearly basis won’t be harmed by the judgement due to their pay already incorporating over 5.6 paid weeks of non-work.
Will It Be Possible To Pro-Rate Any Holiday Entitlements For Part Time Staff?
No, given that everyone who is continuously retained has the right to 5.6 weeks of annual paid leave at the very least. This fundamental legislative right to 5.6 paid weeks cannot be diminished to reflect part-time employment.
Part-time employees, on the other hand, will require less days off to get 5.6 weeks off from work. Consequently, if the holiday entitlements for part-time employees or staff is given in either days or hours, a pro-rata computation will be required to be done.
Is There A Risk Of Having To Make Holiday Payments In Arrears?
Any present part-year or irregular hours employees or staff as well as those who have departed within 3 months, may be able to file a claim for improper deduction from earnings in order to recover unpaid holiday compensation.
An individual must first use the ACAS pre-claim conciliation system before bringing a claim. Following three months of the final “unlawful deduction,” the ACAS procedure should be initiated. Based upon when the holiday period begins and when vacation payments are made there could be concerns about statutes of limitations and whether claims have run their course.
The Working Time Regulations grant both workers and employees the right to paid holidays. People who are legitimately self-employed or only working on short-term fixed-term contracts that are less than a complete holiday year are not impacted by this decision.
Employers may want to think about alternate contractual bases for hiring employees who will likely only work parts of the calendar year or who are only needed for certain times or tasks.
