Company wants me to pay back holiday days.

[Mooshamoo]

I started in a job in November 2022. We have an online annual leave system .
At the start of January 2023, 21 days on our online system became available to me for me to take.

I asked my manager could I take two weeks off at the start of the year. I took the last week of January and the first week of February off. This was approved by my manager. I took them. I was then moved to a new manager. Which was the way the company worked. New starters were with one manager. After two months you were changed to another manager

The company was pretty abusive and at the end of February I decided to leave.

I left. I then got an email from my second manager saying I had taken more annual leave days in the time I worked there, then I had accrued. And that I have to pay this annual leave money back. It is 550 euro. I'm in Ireland. This is a lot of money to me as i am now in between jobs.

Can they do this. My first manager who approved the annual leave days, never told me that I did not have enough annual leave days to take. She approved them. She never told me at any stage that if I left the company that I would have to pay these annual leave days back. If I had known that I wouldn't have taken them .

Can they do this to me now?

Ah - I see there is more than one page to this, apologies, you've probably been alerted to the above a fair few times by now

Jesus give her a break Guys, read the bloody thread, she knows.

Yes on paper it sounds easy. Working from home sounds easy. In reality it was the hardest job I've ever worked in my life. I've never worked as hard. In an office job, I was able to look at emails for ten minutes.

In this work from home job I was allowed five minutes each day to go to the toilet. If I went one minute over that , I wolluld be shoutes at by three managers. They track your every second.

I've seen one person miss a call. The manager posted about that person missing a call in the group chat (150 people) and shamed them.

YABU.
The management have no responsibility to explain to you ‘if you suddenly decide to leave, you will have to pay any over spent holidays back’ because it will all be written in the terms of your employment contract which you must have signed and in doing so accepted. You haven’t earned those annual leave days, so why should they pay you for them.

It wouldn’t be fair to the other employees.

Sorry you’re going to be fanatically worse off for this debt, but you have made your choices naively and now you will have to face the consequences.
Hopefully see this as a lesson to read future contracts carefully and you’ll always know clearly where you stand with things.

Yes as I said before , I understand that now. As I said I quit on a day where I was under a lot of pressure and I didn't think it through. I should have thought about the annual leave. understand about the al now

I've seen one person miss a call. The manager posted about that person missing a call in the group chat (150 people) and shamed them.

bloody norah, OP, you really are better off out of thee. There must be an Irish equivalent of ACAS? In Germany I'd go to the government organisation that looks out for worker's rights (they do spot checks on time sheets and there are massive fines if workers don't appear to be getting their legally mandated breaks, or are working more than 10 hours more than once without good reason).

Absolutely snitch on them. Tell them all the things you have told us here.
And also ask what to do about your contract - they really ought to have given you a copy that you could take home or print out for yourself. Are you very sure you didn't get one by email to your private address? Ask the ACAS-equivalent what you can do about getting a copy of your contract to check that what the employer says is in there, really is in there. they will be able to advise.

OP - you live, you learn. Contact citizen's advice or whatever the equivalent of that is where you are and find out where you properly stand. You need some independant sound advice, not lots of people on the internet bashing you for being naive.

Yes I've just been working this out myself. Im sure I do owe them more money.

I quit on 24th which Is a Friday. I was meant to work the weekend of that week and the Mon and Tue of the next week. I was meant to work 25+25+27+28th Feb. So if they are calculating that I owe them for those four days. I will owe them about another 330 euro on top of the hol pay.

Also if there working practices are this shoddy then you might be able to get away with this if you kick up a fuss. I guess you won't need anyone to tell you how leave entitlement works in your next job!

I don’t think the OP needs a pile on. To the bullies - does it make you feel smug to know something someone else has missed? Feeling better kicking someone when they’re down.
I haven’t seen this kind of behaviour on here in a while - you should be ashamed of yourselves!

Thank you for that! Sometimes a few kind words mean a lot

I no, but she said her contract says nothing about it, so they can’t as far as I can tell.

I agree you owe the money back to your employer in addition to the working days from 25th to the 28th of Feb if you were paid up to month end .

however please stop stressing about this . They will most likely accept it in instalments . But also if everything you say happened is correct I would be claiming for the unpaid overtime and breaks you did not get to take . Working in private industry is difficult and hard to take breaks at time.

I would contact NERA for advice too and even let your ex employer know you will be contacting them re your breaks and unpaid overtime .

you could also use this opportunity to meet with management and see if you could get things improved and go back ?

but please stop stressing . I don’t think they will show up demanding payment in full . Try work out a plan of action for yourself .

OP, have you checked your contract?

They are only legally permitted to require you to repay holiday pay if there’s a written clause in the contract allowing them to do so.

It could be in the holiday section or it could be combined with a generic clause permitting the employer to make general deductions from pay for monies owed (which also has the effect of you owing them money if there isn’t enough in the final pay run to deduct).

If you don’t have a contract or they haven’t included a written clause then they can’t recover it from you.

Yes of course that’s normal. They wouldn’t think to tell you as prob assumed you wouldn’t leave so fast.

They didn't send my work contract to my work email. It is on a system that you have to log in to. It is not possible to copy the work contract and it is not possible to email it to my own personal email address. When I tried to before it said that I don't have administration rights

That's really, really dubious behaviour on their part. You should be able to have your own copy of your contract. I've worked for some shysters in my time but never anybody who's done that. It does very strongly suggest that there is stuff in there that they don't want seen by unions or employment specialists. I would at least contact them and say that you would like a copy of your contract, with the relevant clauses regarding annual leave highlighted for you. You may find that if you start to play hardball a bit, they back off.

I worked with someone who handed in his notice in April. He was told he would be paid for any holiday he hasn't taken. He gleefully told me he would get paid for 25 days holiday (our full entitlement) as he hadn't taken any holiday this year.

I tried to explain to him that I don't think it works like that, but he didn't understand.

So I don't think OP's thinking is unusual, some people see it as a perk and don't realise or understand it's accrued.

I worked at a supermarket and left on 26th March (our holiday was April - March). They took 0.5 days pay back from me as I had taken my full entitlement for the year.

I'm just trying to work out exactly what I owe them other than the hol oay. They paid me for month of Feb. I quit on 24th Feb and I was meant to work 25th 26th 27th and 28th Feb. But then someone on here said that pay is averaged over 31 days and as Feb has 28 I would owe more for those four days than if I quit any other month. So it's hard to know as its February pay

Knowing them , they'll prob over calculate what I owe aswell just to be extra nasty. And add on some kind of fine too.

😂

I doubt it, you quit with no notice and they’ve asked for what they are owed, their payroll haven’t done anything wrong and you’ve potentially caused damage by not showing up to shifts. Neither you or the employer have performed well in this situation.

It looks like I owe them for four days work in Feb and hol pay.
At the minimum it looks like I owe them at least a thousand euro. But they might say I owe more for the February days as February only has 28 days

You really need to see the written company policy on all of this. You mention that you have a friend still working there. Can you ask them to send you over a copy of the company policy if they have this on their system?

Then at least you would have this to look at.

Then you need to make contact with the company and sort this out. Citizens Advice can also help you with this.

Yes I agree it's not great to quit with no notice. I wouldn't have quit if I hadn't been broken down. But I wish now I'd thought about it a lot more before I'd do done it. I've never quit any other job. Ive def learned not to quit on a bad day again. As it will only hurt me more in the end

Ok OP

1. request a copy of your contract of employment from your employer
2. also request a copy of the holiday policy, and/or the employee handbook
3. report them to the relevant authority for a breach in the Working Time Directive i.e. not allowing you to take breaks during your working hours. In the UK this would be the HSE.

Can you try to get a job where your friends work, rather than go back?

Oh and let your employer chase you for the money, they sound like they have treated you appallingly.