To think my boss is breaking the law

[tequilasunset]

I started work in a restaurant on 1st April this year 1. The restaurant opens 7 days a week from April until October then weekends only from November until March.

The hours differ from week to week, on a rota basis.

I haven't been given a contract and was told when I started that the boss only pays 16 hours holiday pay as it's seasonal work.

I didn't actually think anything of it at the time but after a conversation with a friend, I'm sure that this can't be legal!

I haven't been given a payslip since week ending 7th October but according to that payslip, I have been employed for 27 weeks and have worked 1,252 hours.

I have calculated that from 7th October until the end of December I will have done approximately another 100 hours, bringing my total hours for the year to 1,352 in 9 months.

I put this information into a holiday entitlement calculator and it said that I was entitled to 163 hours of holiday pay - so minus the 16 hours I've already received, my boss apparently owes me an extra 147 hours of holiday pay

Are my calculations correct?? And if so, how can my boss get away with not paying it??

If my calculations are wrong, can you please explain why?

Tinsel, iv had searches in my job roles, but that is Not ok!

@Tinsel79

I think you should read this www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=6078 and consider a chat with HR or a union rep. If you haven't a union on site ring Unite and see if they can advise you.

What you have been through is at best workplace bullying and at worst sexual harassment.

Thank you so much for your help and advice guys!

I've been reading so info on the ACAS website and from what I can see, all employees, regardless of type of contract or hours worked are entitled to paid holiday days equivalent to 12.07% of total hours worked.

So by those calculations, after deducting the 16 hours I was apparently owed, I'm still entitled to about 147 hours worth of holiday pay - as Lougle worked out.

If I actually manage to get them to pay up it will be a miracle though!

Does holiday pay have to be paid by the end of the year? Do they have to pay this in one lump sum?

Stripping down to your knickers is not a reasonable management instruction.

Even the briefest of searches brings up multiple different phrasings of this:

"Even if the employer has the contractual right to subject their employees to a physical search, then it must be carried out in a reasonable way. For instance, it should be done in privacy by someone of the same sex as the individual.

There should also be limits to which the employer can go – even if there is a contractual right to search, this does not mean that they can carry out an intimate strip search."

It's tax year I think so by April 2019 now, you have until 31st March to take holidays owed. Hope you get them and the money owed

In Aus we get 4 weeks holiday pay if we are full time (38 -40 hour weeks). They do not expire, just roll over one year to the next and accumulate, so if you were to leave and have 6 weeks built up they still need to pay those 6 weeks out.

I get what Tinsel is saying, it is easier not to rock the boat for fear of losing your job. My old boss never paid a cent in overtime or penalty rates for nights/sundays even though he should have. To this day he still gets away with it, doesn't make it right though!

Pizza meant that your holiday pay is included as part of the package for your wage so if your boss isn't paying it then you are being underpaid what the law says you are entitled to.

Good for you standing up for yourself! Hope you get what you should.

Could be worth checking if your local council will take an interest. A friend of mine lives in Glasgow. Her teenage daughter got a p/t job in a takeaway.

Her first pay turned out not to be new for 16 year olds, but something like £1.50 an hour. Friend rang the council, got transferred to the relevant person, who went round to the takeaway, told them to start paying the girl the right wage.

He added that if they didn’t, or sacked her or bullied her, he’d get his colleague in environmental health to come and do an extremely thorough inspection tot he point of being forensic.

So, it obviously depends how engaged your council is where you live, but might be worth a shot.

Lots of employees wear uniforms, does not mean their employers have the legal right to make them strip for them in front of people of the opposite sex without any privacy.

If you believe they do, they've really fed you a line. Do you think that's happening at Royal Mail? Supermarkets? Hospitals? Argos?! British Gas? Debenhams? The receptionists at your GP surgery? All having to strip to their underwear on demand because they're provided with a uniform? You think all these employers are doing that?

And even if it's in your contract, it's both a civil and criminal offence if they did not have legally valid consent from you. Legally valid consent does not exist where there was coercion.

Op, holiday years are normally specific to the employer. If your contract doesn't specify your leave year then it starts on the first day of your employment and then ends 12 months later.

Whether days can roll over also depends on contract. I don't think statute makes any provision for this. Default is no roll over.

You could use the gov.uk calculator, print it out to show them something official rather than handwriting your own calcs:

www.gov.uk/calculate-your-holiday-entitlement

But I would speak to Acas first about how best to proceed.

You could also report to HMRC who carry out minimum wage enforcement.

@Tinsel79 - that is still a strip search, and you should not expect that in a working environment. Members of the opposite sex should not have been present at all. I'm shocked you're not going to report them at all - they'll just continue to abuse their authority if you let them get away with it.

Bloody hell tinsel, that simply ain't right. It's abuse. No offence genuinely but crikey.

Yes, there were others of the opposite sex present

So it wasn't private then.

It doesn't count as an intimate or strip search, as I still had underwear on

A strip search means you had to remove some or all of your clothing. To have ended up solely in your underwear you had to remove the majority of your clothing.

I can imagine why you're so intent on arguing they did nothing wrong, but they did.

Your employer most certainly cannot make you take off your uniform and stand in your underwear! I'd bring a discrimination claim on that.
It is totally unreasonable, stop trying to justify it.
The sex of the person doing it is irrelevant.

The 5.6 week's holiday is capped at that, by the way. The calcs above are right but working overtime does not increase it over the 5.6 weeks of hours.

The holiday year is not the tax year, it is whatever holiday year the employer has set and is far more usually the calendar year.

There has been recent case law that says that employers have a duty to inform employees that they are entitled to take holiday, not just keep quiet and then tell them they have lost it.

An employment tribunal would wipe the floor with this employer. As for the strip search, I don’t really have the words.

Tinsel, in those circumstances removing clothes down to underwear is a strip search.

Private means no persons of the opposite sex present and watching. No audience.

Please refuse to do this in future

OP, have you already received the payment for the 16 hours, and if so, when was this paid. Are you sure it isn't 16 hours per month or something? That would be about right for a 35 hour working week.

Blimey Tinsel, it doesn’t matter that it’s in your contract that you can be searched. What your manager did was illegal and exploitative and you should report him to the police.

Jeezz is that really right? I thought that only the police could do that with a very good reason to do so and in the presence of a Female officer?

If anyone at the place where my daughter works did that and asked her to strip to be searched they'd have me calling round there to advise them in NO uncetain terms never to do it again .

Thats all disgusting:(

Wow tinsel I can’t believe you think what your employer is doing is ok?! I’m totally shocked. You should be reporting them to the police, regardless of what your “contract” says!

OP I worked part time in a bar a few years ago and the owner was a millionaire but so tight! I asked for holiday pay and he said I didn’t get any, I said yes I did, I was paid through the books, paid tax and had pay slips. He stood his ground until I took in print outs from the acas and gov websites stating my legal rights to holiday pay.

I told him I would leave them with him and then he could let me know by the end of the week if he was still refusing to pay me what I was due, so I could take it further.
He paid up.

there was a post recently from someone who said they had to strip down to their underwear for a first aid demo in a care job.

MN deleted it

I took a week off in July and another in November and I was given 8 hours pay for each week, = my 16 hours holiday pay.

I have had a few other holiday days too but they were unpaid.

I definitely do not get 16 hours a month.

@MNHQ

I just don't understand how my employer has gotten away with not paying proper holiday pay for so long - the manager has worked there 7 years and only gets 16 hours a year too!!!

@tequilasunset they get away with it because people put their head down instead of reporting them.