Talk

Flip

Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.

Work

Treatment of public holidays for part-time workers

17 replies

potentialenergy · 16/04/2016 19:35

I work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I'm hoping someone with knowledge of HR law can advise me about the treatment of public holidays (the majority of which fall on Mondays and Fridays).

When I asked my new employer about their policy a junior HR staff member responded: "At present if you are part time and your work pattern does not fall on a Monday, then you are not paid for the bank holiday. So if you work Tues – Thu, and therefore not on a Monday, you don’t get paid for the Monday when a bank holiday comes around."

I was a bit confused by this, and there was no explanation in the HR policy documents, so I queried it further.

I explained that a common approach (used by my two previous employers) is to give part-time workers a pro-rata entitlement of days off in lieu of public holidays according to the number of hours they work, to ensure that full-time and part-time employees are treated equally (there's an explanation here if it helps to illustrate what I mean: www.workingmums.co.uk/advice-and-support/pro-rata-bank-holidays-ask-the-expert/). So if a full time employee gets 30 days AL + 8 days PH, then a 0.5FTE employee would get 15 days AL + 4 days PH allowance. If they normally worked on Mondays then they could use the PH allowance for the Bank Holiday itself, but if not then they could use it on a lieu day instead.

However, a more senior HR manager replied to this as follows:

"Your entitlement to be absent from work on a paid basis on a public holiday stems from a requirement ordinarily to be present on that day. In the absence of the requirement, there is no entitlement and therefore no pro-rata equivalent.

The Part-Time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 provide that part-time staff are not treated less favourably than comparable full-timers in their terms and conditions, including an entitlement tothe same hourly rate of pay, the same access to company pension schemes, the same entitlements to annual leave and maternity/parental leave on a pro rata basis, the same entitlement to contractual sick pay, and no less favourable treatment in access to training unless different treatment can be objectively justified and for this purpose, a part-timer has to be compared to an equivalent full-timer.

We do not operate a solely standard Monday - Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm working hours arrangement, as many other employers might. At any time, staff may work a variety of patterns ... The comparison to be made in your case would therefore be to a full-time member of staff working on days other than Monday each week (e.g. Wednesday to Sunday working or Tuesday to Saturday working). Such an individual would equally not receive a pro-rata or other allocation of leave in relation to public holidays falling on Mondays. Equally, that individual does not suffer a detriment since attendance and pay are unaffected.

Conversely a part-timer doing the same hours as you but over a Monday-Friday working week would be on paid leave on all public holidays falling on those days.

Thus the reason for your not receiving a pro-rata or other allocation of time off equivalent to public holidays falling on non-working days, is in relation to these not being working days and not in relation to your being part-time. There is, therefore, no pro-rata allocation nor unequal treatment."

Does this explanation sound reasonable/legal? The employer is a university, hence the non-standard hours worked by some employees (security, library etc), but I work in an administrative department where everybody does work standard hours. My previous employer was a university too, and they did give me a pro-rata entitlement.

OP posts:

Report

NeatandTidyTidyandNeat · 16/04/2016 19:51

Hmm, what does your contract say? For example, past public and private sector contracts I've had have specified a leave entitlement of "X days per year plus X statutory bank holidays". In which case, when part-time, as you describe in your first example, HR would take pro-rate the combined total of annual leave days and stat hols. In the NHS, as people had unusual working patterns what with operating a 24/7 workplace, the holiday entitlement would often be expressed as hours rather than days, for part-time workers.

I can see what your employer is trying to claim in their long description (that there is no expectation of paid stat hols because they are not deemed to be usual working days in your worked pattern) but if your contract says they're included, then I would go back and politely say they're wrong

If your contract doesn't say you're entitled to them, but instead says "X days" (and X is more than the stat minimum which I think is 20 inc bank hols) then er, ask to switch working days to include Mondays?!