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?

She’s very unreasonable to complain about more pay and holidays. She works 60% (3 out of 5 days a week) so gets 60% of salary and leave etc.

But your workplace is very unreasonable to make you take annual leave for Bank holidays- surely they’re free to everyone and in addition to annual leave.

Unless they’ve added the number of BHs in a year to your annual leave entitlement.

This is bonkers.
There are two ways a contract can set out annual leave and BH:

1. 28 days plus 8 BH;
2. 36 days including BH.

Statutory leave is 28 days including BH.

Full and part time employees are contracted to work x hours per year. You then deduct y hours annual leave and BH to get the net hours they are required to work. By working Tuesday to Thursday on BH weeks the PT employee is just using flexibility to take their leave when they want rather on BH. Overall they have the correct pro rata leave and work the required pro rata hours they are paid to work.

So full time workers get their annual leave (minimum of 20 days, some do get more) and then 8 days on top for bank holidays.

A part time worker gets their annual leave pro-rata to the hours they do so will have less hours/days overall. They also only get a percentage of the bank holiday (think half a day allowance) and have to use their normal annual to take the full day.

So whilst full time workers get the full day and normal annual leave, part time workers get half the bank holiday and use half a day annual leave for the rest. Why do your colleagues think that's fairer and 'right' than your part time colleague still working her full amount of hours and getting half her bank holiday back (given she didn't get an extra day off and they all did?)

OP how would you feel if the part time worker had to use the 0.2 part of the day from her holiday everytime there was a bank holiday because that’s the alternative.

Or indeed how would you feel if every bank holiday you had to use 20% of your annual leave entitlement?

Yeah that’s it, we can’t swap our days around because we work full time, and it’s not possible to work weekends anyway, so we have to take the bank holidays no matter what.

I Do this on 2 days a week. My work is still there when I come back from a day off so I do it to keep up. (Or I’d just do over time that week to catch up so same difference)

The amount of holiday full timers get is pertinent tbh

full timers at my place effectively get 8 days extra holiday that they have to take on BH

i get 3/5 of 8 added to my holiday and have to take it for BH that fall on my days

if anyone chooses to work a BH they get a day off in lieu. If anyone chooses to work a non working day (weekend for full timer) then they get a day off in lieu. Obviously you have more scope to do that as a part timer but I think you are underestimating the downsides of being part time in a department that is otherwise all full time

the legal minimum days off is 28 days and bank holidays can count as part of that so in OP's workplace they are shut on all 8 BH so these 8 days are deducted from A/L allowance so now they have 20 days free choice

They are paid if you are forced to take them. You get 5.6 weeks paid leave a year - 28 days. If you have to take the bank holidays off as part of these 28 days, then they are paid. If you get the bank holidays off PLUS 28 days, they don't have to be. Or if you just get 28 days off a year and work on bank holidays, they aren't extra.

Basically, if they are counted as part of your annual leave balance (20 of your own choice plus bank holidays), they are paid.

When I first went part-time I still had to work my usual three days week but never had a bank holiday unless it fell on a day I was due to work. It was only more recently that I was given a pro rata allowance.

If your colleague works the usual three days the week of a bank holiday and you only work four with the bank holiday off, I don't know what you're complaining about. Would you want them to only work two and be forced to take annual leave?

And the idea of her working from home on Mondays is pretty useless if no one else is working.

We get 28 days total, 20 of our own, and 8 bank holidays. The office is closed on bank holidays, but there is an option to work from home (part timer was offered this last year but asked if she could just swap days around instead). Full time staff aren’t allowed this, so we have to use the bank holiday.

Do you get paid extra for working bank holidays? I’d always work them if offered as we get double time, but other than that don’t really see the issue with what your coworker does tbh. I work Wednesday to Friday every week and still get the pro rata for the bank holidays as part of my leave allowance 🤷‍♀️

28 days total, 20 of our own and 8 bank holidays

Ok so this is actually quite pathetic of you all and I think you need to give yourselves a good shake

if she changed her days to Tues to thurs then she would get more optionality over her BH allocation so would that piss you off too?

If you don’t have a rota to cover (ie particular people cover particular days) then does it actually matter what days she’s in?

If the manager is fine with it the rest of you should butt out. If I was managing your section and I found out you were talking about it, I would tell you to see me individually and not discuss my desition, or another person A/L in a open office.

This is pretty normal. Lots of places reduce your annual leave allowance for the bank holidays. You don't get 28 days PLUS bank holidays. They don't need to do that legally and they can force you to use your holiday allowance to cover for them.

The part time worker means that her 3 days can be shifted so that one of these days of AL doesn't need to cover the bank holiday. Obvs full time can't do this unless the office is open on a saturday or are happy for staff to work independently. The downside of her having to use the AL for the BH is that her part time hours means that she has 60% of the choice for her AL of choice. That's a bit trickier for booking holidays.

It's not worse for you, you just want it to be worse for her OP.

The issue here is the different treatment of the holiday allowance.

Both your holiday allowances allows for bank holiday, with the part time staff member being prorated.

However she is allowed to swap her bank holiday for another day but you are not. I agree this is not fair. Where I have to work on a banI holiday because I’m busy I take a day off next week in lieu. I don’t add them up and then take a week off which is what your HR may be worried about.

I think the focus should be on asking HR to review the policy and not your part time staff. If she took every bank holiday off she’d actually lose some other holiday!

The team are being cocks. Especially the complaint about not getting a say in whether she day swaps. Why on earth would they?!

Been there as the part timer working Tuesday to Thursday.

Basically I should have had proportionate time off in lieu as hours added to my annual leave. Employer said tough luck, you only get Bank Holidays as time off if they fall on a working day.

That's not what Employment Law says as it's self evidently discriminatory.

And as, barring Xmas/NY or extra BH for Royal Weddings etc, I never work BHs I took the time on work days.

The flip side is that a full timer can get a week off at a cost of 4 days AL. In the Civil Service where we had a 'privilege' day on the Tuesday after late May BH I could take a week at cost of 3 days AL!!

It's not working at home that the OP wants, they want the part time worker to only work 2 days that week, not 3, so that the BH affects their choice of AL days too. Which is rubbish. They just want it to be worse for them for no reason.

'It's shirt for me, so it should be shirt for them too'

I agree. I worked in one like this myself, albeit full time. You should watch out OP, people this unreasonable might not be able to contain it to only one channel.

So your colleague gets 3/5th of the 8 bank holiday days, so just under 5 days, to your 8.

You have no choice but to take your 8 days on the designated bank holiday days- you are already full time so there is no flexibility for you to do an ‘extra’ day somewhere else. There’s little point you wishing you could take your bank holiday days whenever you like rather than on those specific days- it just logistically isn’t possible for full time staff.

Your colleague doesn’t strictly speaking HAVE to take her 5 days on those designated days- she has the option to work on a day she usually wouldn’t work- freeing that bank holiday allowance day up to be used at another time of her choice. (Of course she won’t be paid for that regular bank holiday day either- just the days she works that week).

I guess it’s up to you whether to be miffed about this- it seems completely pointless to me. It’s one of the perks of being part time that you have this kind of flexibility.

The only way to level the playing field would just be to not let her do this. So if she works Mondays- 3/5th of the time she gets a 2 day week and gets paid for those. The other 2/5th- she has to take annual leave to cover them. Is that levelling the playing field really though? None of you have to take annual leave to cover bank holidays! And surely it would just make her life harder, just for sake of the rest of you not feeling she gets an extra perk. It’s really petty. You can’t make things ‘perfectly equal’ when you aren’t doing the same hours.

That's precisely what the problem is. The full timers have to use up a days leave to have the bank hoiiday even if they don't want the day off. She doesn't.