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?

Ooh, I worked in a call centre for spare cash once and quit because it was so unbelievably shit 😂 One of my colleagues even got a bladder infection from not being allowed to go to the toilet.

(Sure my colleague could've gone all bolshy and Big Union Campaigner but I think she just wanted to get through the day and bring home food money for her kids!) Luckily I was in a position of privilege and able to quit immediately.

I was also somewhat naive about certain basics when first joining the workforce, plus returning to the workforce later on. I misinterpreted certain statements in my contract (and I'm fairly literate – just that these were widely-known corporate norms obfuscated in legalese), and accepted at face value some (on hindsight, very obviously) unenforceable terms. Luckily I had 2 c-suite parents, plus everyone else in my life was fairly corporate, so none of this ever even became an issue at all.

This thread is pretty nasty, and assumes a certain level of basic privilege (no matter how low a bar that is). Thousands of people are in OP's position: having to work utterly shitty low-paid jobs on the breadline (and no, not everyone wants to martyr themselves for company reform), and not having certain basic life skills/awareness due to family or other circumstances.

Obviously OP is learning! Some people learn from a nice sit-down and read-through of their contract with their parents when they're 18 or even 21, others learn from being casually warned by others to read their contract closely upon taking their first few jobs, yet others have to learn the hard way by themselves like OP.

"don’t re-enter the workforce until you understand how to do that."

@FoxInSocksSatOnBlocks My, aren't you a good little corporate serf 😂😂😂 It's not a Jesuit mission you have to be morally qualified to participate in lol. It's a company with shitty practices and shit pay, enacted and existing for the sole purpose of making money for fat cats at the top. (And in case you think I'm just being bitter, this is by someone closely related to a few of those fat cats, albeit hopefully not ones who are proponents of shitty practices and pay!)

Hey OP, I think I know the company. They are well known for treating their employees and customers like shit.
Earlier I gave you the contact details of the WRC. I suggest you give them a ring tomorrow for advice. Don’t pay them back until after you have spoken to them.
Also, I didn’t know you could use annual leave before the time was earned I always had to work 6 months at least first.

It will have been in your contract. You’ve clearly made a big mistake.

id also be worried that you’ve quit without notice - they could sue you for your notice period. I do think going back might be a good idea, better than the alternative surely.

No I think it's too late to go back. They've locked me out of everything, and arranged to collect my laptop . I don't think they would have me back now if I even offered. It's too late. I'll just have to pay.

@Mooshamoo I know you said they've locked you out of the system, but please ask to look at your contract. You absolutely have a right to verify before agreeing to pay. It will likely be in your contract but it'll be good to look at the exact terms they've set out anyway, plus verify the calculations.

OP, that company sounds horrible and exploitative and I'm sorry you went through this.
In the UK we have ACAS providing free advice on worker's rights, do you have something like that in Ireland?
Yes, by law you owe them money. But they didn't respect your right to breaks and forced you to do unpaid overtime. And they bullied you and your colleagues.
Good luck! I hope you won't have to pay that money back and that company will stop exploiting people.

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine 😕😕😕

OP, I can't believe how absolutely hideous people have been on this thread.

And you've kept your calm, and been polite and honest in the face of some really horrible scuzz who've taken pleasure in stick the boot in.

I'm so sorry this has happened to you. Mistakes happen. People misinterpret things. Your mental health is worth more than a few hundred euro, it sounds like you needed that holiday and I'm sorry it's caused so much anguish for you xx

They’ve locked you out because you left, they can’t have people that have left the company accessing systems, it would breach policies and get people sacked.

BUT it’s not too late to call and find out for sure if you can/can’t go back for a short time. Call them and find out for sure, then you know.

@TiaraBoo no one is saying to get someone to sneak her in or something. Just ask for a copy of her own contract in her employee file on system – her own data protection rights surely, and many companies would have no issue with that. Alternatively, does the written statement (which the company is legally required to provide you with) state anything about this?

Yes you can take them at any stage in the year, but if you leave before you’ve accrued those days, you have to pay them back. The system that lets you take it in Jan/ Feb assumes you’ll then do the work to earn this holiday, not leave before you have, or if you do leave, you have to pay for it.

As others have said, it’s almost six months worth of holiday you’ve taken. So they’re going to want to take it back.

If you’d worked six months but not taken any leave, you’d want paying for that time, and rightly so.

Okay.

Of course the company is going to pay me a salary, why even bother looking at my contract to determine how much it is :)

Of course I'm going to get company benefits, why even bother looking at my contract for the specifics :D

You must be fairly simple minded. Obviously she owes them money, but the exact terms of repayment will be subject to each company's individual policy, whether written or discretionary (handbook will be useful too).

Tiny off chance but it's also worth noting that sometimes contracts/even large companies can have stunning omissions. I've wormed my way out of issues thanks to vague or even non-existent clauses on things people like you would otherwise have accepted at face value. In the absence of an explicit and detailed clause, it's not a statutory requirement for OP to repay her holiday leave.

Hard ball.
Work out all the non-paid work you did in the breaks - an hour a day for 3 months is about 8 days.
Tell them (don’t ask them) that they have to reclassify 8 days of your “annual leave” as “time off in lieu” and therefore you don’t owe it.
Stick to that.
Threaten a solicitor (I won’t say get a solicitor as you don’t have any money).
They have to decide whether to go to court (or whatever next steps are in Ireland) over a tiny amount of money (to them).

People keep telling you to look in your contract but a lot of these things are on the intranet sites call centres have and will probably end up showing you were you could access it all along just to prove it was there all along.

Call them and set up a payment plan.

Yes of course they can and it what happened normally when you leave and used too much leave and not built the time up

@Mooshamoo Hope you OK. Hopefully you won't get another 10 pages of people repeating what was said on page 1 that you now understand.

Like someone further up has said:

1. Write back to them that you would also like to have your overtime paid to you and subtract that from the 10 days.
2. Did they correctly subtract the 3.5 days you have already accrued for the first two months of the year?
3. Sorry this happened to you. It is unfortunately standard practice (as you know now) but your employer sounds terrible nonetheless and I'm glad you decided to leave. You are much more important than your job.

Another thought is that the company’s records will show lack of breaks and other breaches of the working time directive and other legislation. All the more reason to push back against them

Say if you've taken annual leave, and then you want to leave the job before six months, what can you do? can you suggest to your employer that you work some unpaid time before you go?

I'm in discussion with them now about going back. I asked them can I go back , I'll see what they say..

I owe them so much money I can't afford to leave. Both directions feel awful I don't want to go back. But I literally can't afford to leave ..I don't want to be in huge debt to them

They generally take the money off your last wage slip.

Normally there is a cut off date for pay which is a week or two before the actual payday, so quitting on payday makes no difference.

I think the particulars vary a bit according to country and employer but generally you would give a month's notice of leaving, and you'd give notice at the end of the payment period. Watch that though, as often you're paid a little before the end of the month, so you don't give notice on payday, but on the last day of the payment period. Payroll/ HR will then look at how many days leave you're entitled to and how many you've taken. If you owe them, they deduct the leave from your final salary so yes, you'd feel like you were working for free, although you're really just working the leave you took.

If you haven't taken enough leave, they can offer to pay you for your leave days or for you to take that leave at the end of the contract, so effectively you leave early.

Oh, and it might go without saying, but maybe not , if you're allowed back and regain access to their systems, for the love of god find a way to get a copy of your contract. Screenshot when you're looking at it. If they've fixed it so you cannot do that, just take actual photographs of the screen. And go through the staff handbook too.