DD has not been paid for any of her annual leave, is there anything she can do?

[BobButtonsismycat]

DD17 works at a well known UK store since November 2024.

Let's call them 'The Mange'!

Before her new manager started in May this year she had no issues at all, however, since then several problems have arisen including this latest irk.

DD works 4 hours each on a Saturday and Sunday. She has to request all annual leave via an app. The manager will not accept requests if she has already made up the rota which is often completed a month or two ahead of time, fair enough, that's not the issue. Some time ago DD requested a weekend off each in June, July and again last weekend. These were all accepted on the app by the manager. However, when DD has checked her recent pay she noticed that she has not been paid for the June and July time off. When she asked the manager about this she told dd is was dd's fault. Apparently she should have marked down the actual hours requested off, so 14.00-18.00 on 26/07/25 instead of simply marking down the 26th July etc and therefore she will not get paid and she can not do anything about last week's time off either so will not get paid for this. The manager knows full well DD only ever works 4 hours on each day and usually the exact same hours too, surely she could have either corrected this herself at the time of request or asked dd to re-enter the details correctly, how was dd supposed to know this if no one informs her? She has spoken to a couple of the other younger ones and the same has been done to them.

Before this manager started in May this had never been an issue, the previous manager would accept the dates DD requested and she was paid accordingly.

The issue going forward is that DD has some AL still to take but the manager has already made up the rotas for the next couple of months and the staff are not allowed to take any time off during their busy Christmas period, her holiday entitlement starts from January to end of December and any annual leave not taken is lost.

Can DD request they back pay this AL taken (and approved) or will she have to see this as a life lesson?

Sorry, I don't have much employment experience as I have been self employed for years so not sure on the laws although I am planning on contacting ACAS today to see if they can advise.

Tell her to put it in writing to the manager that she is legally entitled to paid annual leave and that if the manager does not rectify their error immediately she will involve ACAS as a first step and take legal action if the matter is not swiftly resolved.

Copy in the manager's manager, the head of HR and if necessary the CEO.

Oh it makes me so cross how our teens get treated in work! I have 2 17r olds too op, both working part time & I've had to draft text messages or emails on many occasions for various issues that they feel out of their depth dealing with, so I sympathise. Agree with pp, set out an email requesting the annual leave be paid, very explicitly- refer to contract if possible and copy in higher manager or HR. Get everything in writing is my best advice.

She can contact HR
Her only hope

so 14.00-18.00 on 26/07/25 instead of simply marking down the 26th July etc

well of course she should have to clarify as otherwise they’d have no idea how much to pay her

She will need to contact HR. So will the others. The manager is a dick. If she has requested the leave incorrectly then someone should have advised her and if others have also done it incorrectly then there's a communication problem.

If the new manager didn't understand the way she had written it down, they needed to call her to clarify, not just refuse to pay her.

Thank you for the advice. I will track down the managers email address and send something to her. In the meantime I will also try to find the HR details.

Returnofjude The manager is fully aware of dd's hours and what she meant, she could have easily rectified this.

Bollocks. They have access to the rota, they know what hours she has in her contract. Fair enough to flag to her that she needs to put the exact hours down in future. Not ok to just not pay her.

Presumably in that case she's not officially taken those hours as annual leave at all and is still owed them?

I also don't think the boss can just say it depends on if she's done the rota or not. The company needs to have an official policy on minimum notice. Find the employment handbook or ask HR (and get them to 'remind' her boss if it's not being followed.)

@BobButtonsismycat There are lots of different types of twatty managers in the world. This one falls under the category of "thick twat" because they think they can just refuse to pay annual leave in clear breach of the law on a technicality and there will be no consequences.

The way to deal with a thick twat is to get everything in writing and report them to someone higher up the food chain to deal with. They then either leave her alone in future or they continue being a thick twat and eventually get fired themselves once the higher ups have had enough of their twattery.

She could have
and she was unfair not to
but 100% not her responsibility and she won’t remotely be blamed for not doing so

Your daughter messed up and only HR can resolve
They will ask her manager to confirm annual leave ahead of took and the hours involved

This is incorrect. The manager has put the company in breach of employment legislation and will get the blame if they don't sort it out.

I agree. IME trying to resolve things politely and reasonably with unreasonable people never works. Go straight to the top. Raise maximum awareness of the mismanagement.

Oh and another thing @BobButtonsismycat. She needs to rope in the other people this has happened to so they can all complain together and get the pay they are owed, and make everyone else aware of this issue in case it has happened to them too and they just haven't checked their pay slips properly.

The complaint to HR/head office needs to make it clear that there is an ongoing issue with this particular manager deliberately not paying young staff the money they are owed for their annual leave.

If there is actually a genuine issue with the way the leave was entered into the app which resulted in someone not getting paid through no fault of the manager's, the only correct response would have been for the manager to ensure that person got paid for the annual leave in their next pay slip and make sure everyone in the team was aware of the correct process for entering annual leave hours in.

They have a duty to ask. This is outrageous and I am an employer.

Again, thank you all for the help and advice, really appreciated.

I've just spoken with a lovely guy from ACAS. The manager has definitely cocked up. DD has been working the exact same hours since she started 9 months ago and she has always been told this is the way to request annual leave and has never been shown a different way or an alternative therefore the manager is in the wrong and it could be seen as unlawful deduction of wages and denial of the right to paid annual leave.

He has advised we formally write (as in email) to the manager and if we get nowhere with her to send the email to HR. Hopefully DD can receive a back payment or retake the annual leave moving forward.

So that's our next step, email the manager.

Oh btw she should either be paid for those hours retrospectively or have her annual leave returned to her. Just not paying her isn't an option.

Edit: sorry posted at he same time as you!

Good advice, but I would copy in the HR manager as the first step (not the second) and mention that she is not the only member of staff this is happened to and several others have also had an unlawful deduction of pay for the same reason.

They need to be aware that there is an ongoing issue.

With this type of manager, if they get into trouble the first time they screw you over, they probably won't do it again. Too cowardly.

By the way, ChatGPT is actually great at drafting these kinds of emails.

Just tell it all the relevant information, specifying that you are in the UK, and it will spit you out a pretty decent letter quoting all the relevant law which will probably make the manager and HR shit their pants.

Definitely cc the manager.

I would suggest indicating to the manager that you have spoken to ACAS in relation to this matter in your email.

First of all - don't blow it up if she wants to keep the job. In my retail experience, any perceived attack on a rota-ing manager means you'll not get put on the rota again. Zero hours retail is shit.

Get the manager to confirm her actions in writing (or send a 'just to summarise our earlier conversation about leave' email if she won't confirm it). Then forward this to HR asking 'innocently' for clarification/staff handbook guidelines, explain this has happened to a group of colleagues and that they haven't had this issue before. Cc in all other affected colleagues.

This neutral way means the manager doesn't lose as much face and your daughter won't effectively be fired (not on the rota) in retaliation (bear in mind that she still might do that). Give them a chance to correct it before involving a Union, mentioning ACAS, higher levels of management.

There are a lot of stupid managers with no clue on legal entitlements - hopefully this will encourage your daughter to escape the claws of retail!

I wish this true but sometimes the thick twats get promoted with excellent references because the people they currently work with just want them moved on out of their department and so they end up in ever more senior roles. And then you get the thick twats who don’t know they are thick twats and so interview brilliantly and get amazing jobs. And then you just get clusters of thick twats congregating at important levels making a massive mess of everything while the people who actually get stuff done just despair.

yeah?
Do you detail the exact 9-5 for every day if you take a week's leave? Or do you just put M-F?
They know how much to pay her because it's the same pay they'd pay her if she was in work. They don't need to ask her every day what hours she actually worked in order to pay her that, do they? The 4hrs is her standard working day, so unless so only had part of that as leave it shouldn't make any difference.

Besides which OP isn't arguing about their pay system, she's arguing that it's unfair to penalise her DD for something she wasn't told about!

But she absolutely shouldn't just 'suck it up.' She needs to clarify with the manager does she still have that AL on top of her extra to take - i.e. the previous one was counted as unpaid leave so she still has all the AL to take another time. In that case, the manager's argument is still a bit unfair given DD wasn't told but isn't actually illegal - in any job AL is at the discretion of the manager, they can place restrictions on when they take it. The only thing they can't do is not allow her any paid AL at all. She can't just "lose" it if she hasn't been allowed to take it, that's illegal. Go over the manager's head to HR if needed.

This type of twat definitely exists, but I think you are talking about a slightly different type of twat to the OP's manager, who isn't an "everyone else will have to clean up your kind of mess" kind of twat, but more of a "we could get sued because of you" kind of twat.

It seems odd that they have an annual leave app that lets you enter leave as both days of the week or an amount of hours. Surely you'd just have one or the other (presumably hours if people do different length shifts).