Part time workers and bank holidays. Fair or unfair?

[crunchiesnuts]

I know that it’s completely legal and up to the employer, but I’m just curious about what people think about this.

I’m part of a small team (there are 7 of us in total). Everyone works full time, 5 days a week, except for one person who is part time, working 3 days a week. This person works Monday-Wednesday. When there’s a bank holiday, they switch their days and work from Tuesday to Thursday instead. Like I said, I know this is all above board and our manager is fine with it, but the rest of the team feels it’s a bit unfair since they don’t have a say and have to use their annual leave regardless.

I’m kind of torn on it. I know this person asked to work Mondays when she took the job, so it feels a bit like having the best of both worlds, but I also get not wanting to burn through almost all your annual leave just for the bank holidays. Recently, this person has mentioned how she doesn’t complain about the fact that the rest of us get more holidays and better pay (which is a bit confusing since we work more hours, so naturally, we would), but it’s stirred up some tension in the office, and I guess, some people think she’s rubbing it in their face. I’m just interested in hearing what others think. Even though it’s legal, do you see it as fair or unfair?

This is just the nature of working part-time, there is nothing HR can do here. You can’t change your working hours because you are already full-time, although if it really mattered that much you could look at condensed hours. You and your colleagues are coming across as bitter. Can’t be happy for anyone unless you personally benefit from it. I hope your part time colleague finds a new job with nicer, more supportive colleagues.

It can’t be a very busy office if you’ve all had time to mull this over.

What a horrible bunch you sound. Does this part timer know she’s working with colleagues who bitch about her behind her back?

As an employer I understand the colleagues’ objection. My new staff do not receive bank holidays as an “extra” day’s holiday; they have to use AL because the office is closed. This means there are, potentially, 8 days of AL to be used for bank holidays, 4 always on a Monday, so the part-timer is saving 4 days of her AL by working a different day!
I might add that once a member of staff has been with us a few years then bank holidays are not taken from AL.

This is a classic "someone else has a teeny, tiny, miniscule benefit that doesn't impact me at all but because I can't have it, I don't want them to have it".
I had someone in a team who didn't drink tea or coffee and was outraged that tea bags and instant coffee were supplied free of charge. It's just so mean spirited and if we took the tea and coffee away, theyd be in the same position but everyone else would be a little bit more miserable.
Let her keep her pro rated 3/5th of a day of annual leave that occurs maybe 5 times a year. For the love of God, it's not hurting anyone is it. What mean spirited people you work with....

Came to say the same.

If you all get 25 days plus bank holidays, pro-rata she is on 15 days plus 4.5 bank hols. So she’d eat into her annual leave if she took all 8 bank holidays as paid holidays.
So maybe she is accruing the additional bank holidays, or maybe they’ve just given her a straight holiday allowance and she doesn’t get paid bank holidays. Either way, if the business is shut you can’t work it.
Does she still work 3 days Xmas week? If not, that’s 2 days of her BH straight away —almost 50%.

@TallShip I don't think it makes any difference whether the bank holidays are part of annual leave or not. If you incorporate them into the 5.6 weeks legal minimum then a full time employee has 28 days of which they're obliged to use 8 to cover for Bank Holidays.

If you have part timers working 24 hours, say, Tuesday to Thursday, and full time is 37 hours then I think they'd get approx 3/5ths of 28 days which you'd probably express as hours. They'll still need to cover Xmas/NY bank holidays falling on working days from their AL but the rest is theirs to do as they wish with subject to formalities of booking leave.

Your FT staff have 8 days of 28 taken up by BH, leaving them 20 days to use as they like. In order to be 'fair' to your 0.5, she should be allowed 10 days to use as she likes. If she's made to take off every BH Monday she only has 6 days to use as she likes. Obviously you're not legally obligated to allow it, but allowing her to swap so she is left with 10 days per year to use freely (pro rata the same as her colleagues) is the morally fair thing.

Although it was over 50 years ago, I still remember my feelings of deep-seated injustice when I was working full-time in a shop, and my day off was a Monday. So I never got any bank holidays.

These days that would be seen as unlawful.

too many comments for me to read all of them. When I started to read your post I assumed it was that this is a 7 day a week operation and that p/t never covers weekends and bank holidays - which I agree would feel unfair even if she is contracted otherwise.
However if the company is closed for weekends and bank holidays it is irrelevant. Your A/L will state all inclusive days or days + BH days. However that is worded is probably the issue here. otherwise I am clearly misunderstanding something .

This doesn't effect you, what would you gain from making someone else's life worse. Just nasty for no reason.

Won't go as as far as to describe OP as nasty but as already noted dealing with leave for people not conditioned to a standard five day week is a 'mare for managers.

@crunchiesnuts can I ask that if your part time colleague’s regular working days were Tuesday to Thursday and not Monday at all would it remain an issue amongst the full timers that the part timer was still getting bank holiday days that they could take when they wanted?
Hopefully this question will help you all realise that your full time colleagues are unreasonable.

I think the correct answer when the PT said it was unfair that she got less holidays was to point out that she got holidays proportional to her working hours, she works less therefore she needs less leave (3 days for a full week vs 5 days). The person who made it tit for tat by erronously pointing out her ability to substitute AL days was the AH here. Mainly because they made it sound like way more of a perk than it actually is - and turned it some weird competition - which got all of you thinking. All based on flawed logic too.

By lumping PH and AL together it does muddy the waters, generally this is only done where there is a shift pattern or 24/7 working model. The PT really only gets 5 PH days. At least 2 of them will not be on a Monday. It is highly likely that she is taking some of her PH days on the PH (Christmas and New Year). There are 3 PH days a year SHE IS NOT ENTITLED TO AT ALL. For any others she will need to either 1. Take AL to cover the time off or 2. work back the hours. I guess if you were aiming to make it fair then at the beginning of the AL year she should nominate the 5 PH days she will be taking, the other 3 days she will move her hours (or take AL). For PT staff that don't normally work Mondays they would have to work their 2 day week on the PH week also - but if they get to displace their day to a day of their choice within that week this creates a disparity between PT staff still.

I think the short answer here is - displacing PH days is not as big a benefit than the FT staff think it is. At least some of the time she working Tue-Thu she is legitimately making up hours she is not entitled to.

I used to be 3 days per week but because the childcare was shut on bank holiday Mondays and work/childcare wouldn’t flex my days, I absolutely resented being forced to use my limited annual leave - even worse when Xmas bank hols also fell on my working days and I was totally scuppered. I kept having to buy extra annual leave.

I’m not sure you understand bank holidays.

A f/t employee is give a number of annual leave days, lets say 20 to take as you wish. In addition a f/t employee will then also be given say 8 bank holiday days to be taken on the bank holiday dates.

Now a part-time employee is working only fraction of a F/T employee’s hours so will only get the same fraction of the leave. Let’s say 12 days annual leave and 4.5 days bank holiday.

Now bank holidays don’t come in fractions. If the business closes on bank holidays then the p/t worker uses a whole day of their bank holiday. Once they get to the 5th, 6th,7th, 8th bank holiday they would need to use up their annual leave so it’s actually tougher for p/t workers if held to their normal working days. They have to waste annual leave on bank holidays. It varies depending on when Christmas is of course.

So letting part time workers move their working day so they don’t have to supplement bank holidays with annual leave is actually a fairer thing to do.

I echo others in saying you guys don’t sound very nice- going nuclear without understanding the facts.

But by doing that you’ll be changing the way the business runs. (You think she exploits the rules wait until those Saturday workers behave whilst working from home on a weekend). They can’t facilitate it and with good reason. They have to have enough people in to make sure the business runs smoothly within a working week. Majority of office staff don’t work weekends. So having people available when not needed or having not enough to meet a certain demand isn’t good business practice. So again your only outcome is to stop it for the small minority it can help. Its still incredibly spiteful and I suspect that the first person bring it up had a very good emotive argument

Exactly!

I worked part time 3 days a week and got 4.8 days of bank holidays, yet if I booked each one off this would easily have been 6 day annual leave so would have eaten into it.
Full time staff never had this issue and just automatically had it off. Managers were happy either way for me to swap or not. At the end of the day you’re all getting the pro rata samecorrect AL. Part timers just had more flexibility in their days.

I would call someone slagging others of behind their back and planning on ways to make their life more difficult nasty

Something else to consider - my mum used to work Wed - Fri. The person she job shared with worked Mon - Wed, so they had to take the bank holiday off when it happened and my mum got hers added to her holiday entitlement. Which also isn’t fair as they both worked the same number of hours per week.

Wow that’s a stretch! She’s already said it was a conversation in the office started by the part timer, so not exactly slagging anyone off behind their back, and now they’re asking if it’s normal, not plotting to make anyone’s life harder! 🙄

I work part time , mon - wed. I get pro rata Monday bank holidays, the rest of the day is deducted out of my annual leave. So in essence it’s split into bank holidays and annual leave. But if I came into work on another day (Friday) I would have the bank holiday hours added to my leave to take when I wanted. It’s just part of being part time. It’s called flexibility which of course you can’t have if your full time. On the other hand, I am expected and I have no problem with this, taking dr’s and dental appointments on my days off. Full timers are allowed to go to those appointments in work time. So I have no problem with that because it’s reasonable!

@crunchiesnuts if the full timers must take the Monday Holidays, so should the part timer, untill they use their pro rata days, once she has none left, then they should bd able to swap days. But they are unreasonable to complain re holidays and pay, as you get paid for the days/hours that you work. If they want the same they need to work full time.

Why should she have to take the Monday off. Presumably the company has work for her to do on the other days so it’s probably in their interest for her to swap.