Converting Employees' Surplus Annual Leave into Pay

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The only reason I can think of is that they are afraid of setting a precedent.

x-no-archive: yes

never heard of 'legal' reason excuse before.. the firm i for just says they don't want to pay for unused leave!

have you approached the management.. state a well reasoned case, they may defer until the next year, or pay a bonus in lieu of the losy holidays..

if not, get another job! they should have arranged sufficient cover, and you are entitled (by law??) to take paid holidays.

sod the deadlines!

To be honest we were thwarted by the "legal" argument ("we'd like to pay you but our hands are tied", etc. etc.), but our HR department has been known to be wrong before. Hence I'm hoping someone can give a definitive answer.

Funny you should mention that - I am. I reckon I should get a few thousand pounds for my surplus holidays which will be a nice leaving bonus!

Indeed.

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 07:39:37 +0000, Mr Scummy wrote: When we suggested some form of

According to ACAS:

"The Working Time Regulations 1998 do not entitle a worker to carry leave over into the following leave year. Neither may unused leave be replaced with a payment in lieu except where employment is terminated. However, the contract may allow contractual leave over and above the minimum entitlement to be carried over or attract payment in lieu, if agreed."

Mr Scummy wrote: of the leave year (at Easter).

No, its a nonsense. You need to take your 4 weeks per year as per the working time directive (which is intended for health & safety reasons), but over and above that the employer can do what it likes.

Francis

Maybe they only get the legal minimul leave.

In which case the HR department are entirely correct.

tim

In message , snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote

In my experience taking your allocated leave during the 12 month period makes no difference to deadlines. The holidays should have been factored into the resource planning.

If an organisation is so reliant on all of the staff not taking the holidays what happens when someone goes sick?

Working without a proper break over a long period often leads to inefficiency and could actually be detrimental to the delivery deadlines.

"tim (moved to sweden)" wrote

But it must be legal to pay all the staff a "bonus", which is totally unrelated to holidays being forfeited?

If each person's bonus just happened to be equivalent in value to the holidays lost at the end of the year, then so what?

That's it! So it really is illegal for a company to make a payment in lieu of unused leave (except when resigning).

Thanks for the information.

IANAL

Are the company also saying you are not allowed to take the holidays you are entitled to ?

Perhaps if you all put holidays in for the same time and leave them with no staff whatsoever...

The point is the staff must by law have a minimum of 4 weeks (IIRC) annual leave.

I don't think he was saying that, he was saying he and the other staff didn't want to leave the company unable to deliver projects by taking their entitled holidays before the year end, and because of that wanted to find a way out that would leave both them and the company happy.

Does anyone know if it;s the EU directive or the wording of the UK law that prevents the conversion of holiday to cash?

Most successful employees don't see the company as the enemy.

Jim.

Why? Your company has engineered the problem and the inflexible position of your HR department has now put you between a rock and a hard place. But the problem is not yours, it is your company's. I suggest that everyone affected books sufficient holiday to ensure that the entitlement is used up. If your management has a problem with that, refer them to the HR department. It's not your problem and it's not for you to have to find a solution to it. Remember: management does not respect a doormat, it wipes its feet on it.

Nope, for the minimum requirement that's illegal as well.

tim

Faced with a similar situation myself last year, I came to an agreement with my Project Manager. I booked a week's leave but come into work, then later I took a week off but booked my hours to his project. The work was done on time, I had my week off and the paper pushers were happy.

It's the UK implementation. But it is pobably in the Directive as well.

Other country's implementations are even more strict.

In the UK, if an employee (genuinely) voluntarily wants to pass up on some of their holiday for the year that's the end of it. In some other countries, if the employer even allows an employee not to take a holiday they (the employer) is guilty of an offence.

tim

Informing them in writing of your intent to take your leave will often cause rigid rules to be relaxed. I've done that a few times before, pointed out to the project manager that I still had X days to take and that time was running out. Invariably it's resulted in said project manager having words with senior people and I've been given an official letter authorising me to carry some of the time over, usually to be used within three months.

A company rarely enforces such rules when it is going to lose out, you just have to make it clear that unless they compromise, you'll be taking the leave now. The reason such rules are there is usually to prevent too much of a liability building up and making the financial stuff look bad. Missing project deadlines can easily make more of a mess of the finances than that.

Dave

"Andy Pandy" wrote

Can staff not waive that right, if they agree? OK, let's assume they can't. Then either :- (1) The OP is talking about the legal minimum, in which case the company must force the staff to take the holiday & they won't be able to work it - even though they agree; or (2) The OP is talking about holidays "in excess of legal minimum", in which case a poster has pointed out here that the employer *can* pay in lieu of those holidays.

That suggests a pretty poor project manager, surely if it's getting that late, they should be finding out from you when your going to be away....

Jim.