To think my husband's employer has this wrong and can't actually do this?

[MrsDeTamble]

I'm wondering if anyone could give me advice on a situation my husband is in at work.

He received a promotion last year meaning he would be on an annual salary rather than an hourly rate. Holidays previously were worked out on an hourly basis i.e 8 hours = 1 day off, 35.5 hours = 1 week off and each employee had so many hours per year holiday.

Now he is on a salary, holidays are taken on a day by day basis (x amount of days per year). This didn't work out as advantageously as previously as the firm closes at lunch time on Fri - previously to have a Fri off, it would have cost him 5 hours of holiday whereas now he has to take a full day, no half days are allowed so if he takes a Friday off, he in effect loses half a days holiday as the firm is closed anyway. He was also given an extra weeks holiday as part of the promotion package. I hope this makes sense?!

I have recently gone back to work 3 days per week. To save money on child care, we put in a request that my husband be able to consendse his week into 4 days, working his 35.5 hours over 4 days rather than 5. We are lucky that the firm have said yes and so far it's working well. However today he tells me that because he no longer works Friday, the firm are taking 5 days holiday away from him.

I don't believe that a. They're actually allowed to do that and b. I am sure he is entitled to his full holidays as he has not reduced his working hours, he is just doing the hours in a shorter period of time.

I can understand why the firm thinks they should do this, my husband would only have to take 4 days off to get a full week away but I believe the answer is to go back to counting holidays in hours rather than days like the people who are paid an hour rate have it. So instead of having 25 days per year, he should have 177.5 hours and to take a week off it should cost him 35.5 hours.

Does this make any sense? Am I right or are the firm right? Can they just take a weeks holiday away from an employee like that?

What really really riles me is he often works more hours than he is paid for anyway!

Thanks - sorry it's so long!

But the amount of holiday being earned hasn't changed. He still has the same total hours. It is just that when he takes holiday now it is more hours than previously. Your example works because the amount of holiday taken off is roughly in proportion to when it was accrued.

To take it to an extreme though, say he took all of his leave under the old working times (some companies let you take leave before it is accrued). Would he then owe 2 days back to the company? Even though he has still taken the same number of hours off?

The change in holiday entitlement is right. However it sounds like they've not worked it out properly in terms of date of changing holiday accrual.

They shouldn't be backdating it to the beginning of the year, only from when he started this new regime of working.

The gov website has a great annual leave calculator to work out what he's accrued until his change in contract. You can type in actual dates etc.

I don't think this is right. Compressed hours is a very complicated work pattern and holidays should only really be taken in "hours".

Keeping days works when your DH takes his full working week off, but what about when he wants to take the odd day? A "day" is more hours for him than for a 5 day colleague and one day may even be longer than another.

Similar with public holidays. When I worked this pattern, I had to "pay" hours from my leave entitlement for the extra hours I would have worked on the day that PH fell on.

at my workplace you get A/L according to how many hours you work.so for a full time post (37.5) hours a week you get 220 hours leave and all bank hols on top. for a part time post you get a set number of hours plus a number of hours for bank hols so when you have a day hol or a bank hol you take off the number of hours for that day.

Presumably when your DH has a "day" off, he is actually having "1.25" days off. Therefore his annual leave needs to be adjusted accordingly. Calculating annual leave in hours wouldn't make any difference. Obviously they shouldn't backdate it to the beginning of the year though if he has only just started doing the compressed hours. Are you sure that this is what they have done?

It's not about how many days he gots so much as how many hours he's paid per day per holiday, so it is correct.

I am salaried and I don't work over the hours I am paid for, I hate the culture of expectation that people work over their hours, I cut my hours (and obviously my wages) to spend more time with the kids when they were born and so I'm not prepared to spend more time away from my kids and not even get paid for it. I think working longer hours perpetuates the myths that the amount of work expected to be done can be done within the hours and I think it disadvantages those with caring commitments. I also think working longer hours than I am contracted to do would put those whom I manage under pressure to do the same. Rant over! This is one of my pet peeves

I'm in retail and in our store we work contracted hours only - turn up, do job, go home. (I do enjoy the job)

In terms of holiday pay accrued what is important is when the holiday is accrued not when it's taken.

Example:

I worked as a full-time nurse for 3/4 of a year. My leave was accrued based on my working hours and I got 29+8 days per year, calculated on an hourly basis. Therefore, each standard day would be 7.5 hours, so 37 x 7.5 = 277.5 hours per year. I worked 3/4 of a year on a 1.0 Whole Time Equivalent contract. The sum, therefore is:

0.75 x 1.0 x 277.5 = 208.12 hours.

Then, I drop to a 7.5 hour contract (0.2 WTE) for the remaining 1/4 of the year. The sum is:

0.25 x 0.2 x 277.5 = 13.875 hours.

Total hours for the year: 208.12+13.875 = 222 hours.

Now, it would be very bad management to allow someone to hold all their hours until the end of the year, but say they had. I would have 222 hours to use. I would only need 7.5 hours per holiday week, so I would have the equivalent of 222/7.5 = 30 weeks holiday left.

They can't deduct the holiday hours accrued from a full time worker when they reduce their contract. They earned them fair and square.

However, in the OP's case, the holiday is worked in days. Her DH normally works 5 days per week, now reduced to 4. He used to get 25 holiday days per year. 25/5= 5 weeks. To maintain the 5 weeks of holiday, he should now get 20 days holiday. 20/4= 5 weeks. Because it's days not hours, he'll get more money per holiday day than his colleague, so it all works out.

The bottom line is that no-one should be using daily annual leave for this exact reason - if a change in the working day is made then there is no sense to what a 'day' is in leave terms.

Thank you to everybody for your input, I didn't expect such a large number of responses.

It would seem now that the situation is almost sorted. DH's manager came back to him this afternoon and said that it's not as easy as him just losing 5 days from this year's holiday entitlement as like previous posters have said, he has earned some of those days in the 8 months that he worked 5 days per week before changing his shift pattern. The manager has gone away to work it out and will come back to DH.

Not to drip feed but something else I thought of this evening - they gave him the go ahead for the new 4 day week on the proviso that when I am on holiday (my holidays are fixed every year), he will revert to his 37 hour (not 35.5... I stand corrected by DH) week over 5 days as it's better for them if he is on site 5 days per week. Presumably now they are changing his holiday entitlement, they can't expect him to do that because if he then wanted to take a week of when I'm on holiday, he'd have to use 5 holiday days. I think he's going to have to tell them that if he is working his hours over 4 days, he's going to be doing that all year round as it just gets too complicated!

Thanks again for helping me see things straight!

Hope they work it out to everyone's satisfaction OP, it does seem like they have not taken the 8 months at 5 days per week into account correctly.

As to the rest of your update, this sounds like they are making it unnecessarily complicated and I can't see why you being on holiday should make any difference to your dh's working week. If they have agreed the new hours/days/week it should just be that unless and until circumstances alter for you or the company that require a renegotiation.

Hope it all works out for you both.

The legislation covering this specifically says that it is counted in weeks not days to cover this situation.

So if you dh wants a week off he books 4 days - that's his normal working week.

Someone who works fewer hours but over, say 6 days, gets 6 days because that is their working week.

He gets an extra day free of work every week, and doesn't have the Friday half-day issue, and you're complaining about five days less holiday? Odd, he's doing pretty well here. And yes, they can do it.

UncleT - have you actually read the whole thread? He isn't getting a whole day per week 'free' as you put it, he is going into work earlier and finishing later Mon - Thurs to compensate for the fact he won't be working on Fridays. I have already said a number of times that I accept the company is correct and I initially misunderstood how it all worked out. But thank you for your helpful comment!

When they gave him the extra 5 days to make up for the half day Friday awkwardness, did they give him a full 5 days extra? Or did they give him 1/3 of them? (Sept - Dec, 4 months / 12 months = 0.333 of a year)

They can't deduct hours from entitlement that he's already earnt, which would be 2 thirds of his entitlement from his old role, less any he's already taken. This is why I prefer annual leave by the hour, makes it much easier to work out.

As for going back to a 5 day working pattern when you're on holiday, it's workable. If he booked a week off at the same time, they would have to work it as if he were on a 4 day pattern, and only use up 4 days leave for the whole week off.

I work three days and get 5 weeks leave so that's 15 days. It's fine if I take it in blocks of 3 as that's 5 weeks, same as the FT staff. Where it isn't so good is if you need to take single days off for any reason, as a single day is a higher proportion of the total. However I never have to take single days off to get tradesmen in etc as I do all that on my non work days (I can switch days to suit othrr appts etc too). So that's to my advantage. However if I'm ill I generally switch days too and make my non work days my sick days, so that levels meback with the FT staff again, it's swings and roundabouts.