debate with employer- bank hols for PT work

[PebblePots]

I'm going back to work part time. My boss has asked me to do Fridays & I have chosen Mon & Tue. My copy of our employment handbook says I am entitled to take bank hols if they fall on one of my working days. I also checked with our central hr department & they confirmed this would be at full pay.

Now my boss is quoting something from an employment handbook different to what mine says & saying bank holidays will be pro rata. I assume I will have to top up with my annual leave allowance to get a full day but he has not clarified this.

Can he do this? I'm going to end up using rather a lot of annual leave!

Thoughts please. My boss is a director & difficult to change his mind.

I was always under the impression that if a bank hol fell on one of your usual working days then you are entitled to it at your normal rate of pay. I work Mon-Thurs and have always taken and been paid for the bank holidays that fall on Mondays but it's just my tough luck re the Fridays. My 20 days annual leave is the only thing adjusted pro rata for the 4 day week.

I assumed this was the case because this was the law but sure someone will be along soon to clarify.

No your boss is right, you get bank holidays pro rata and if you normally work on a Monday you have to use your annual leave to top it up.

Which is why most part time workers choose NOT to work Mondays.

Ours are pro rata.

Mine were pro rata too (public sector).

Private sector your boss is right pro rata stat Hols for p-t

Yes lefreak is right.

Agee with lefreak. If you got the full day off you'd be getting 50% of your working week off whereas a full timer benefits by 20%. Most places do pro data bank hols now.

The pro rata calc goes something like this...

You total holiday (annual leave and bank holidays) if you are full time is 33 days (this is an example)
If you work 3 days a week your total holiday is (33 / 5) * 3 = 19.8 days (rounded to 20)
This includes bank holidays and annual leave so if a bank holiday falls on one of your working days you have to take it from the 20 days.

Another one agreeing with lefreak here. (Public sector) I think pro rata bank hols makes it fair for all part timers regardless of which days you work. Otherwise those working Mondays get at least 4 extra days off per year.

i woudl avoid mondays

Yes this is right and why i work Tuesday to Thursday.

whh dont you do thursdays and fridays?

YEP, HE'S RIGHT. you dont have to come to work cos its a bank hol but you dont get it as an 'extra' day as it would be unfair on full timers. dont work mondays (or fridays cos of good friday!)

It's got to be pro-rata otherwise it discriminates against full time employees and those that don't work Mondays.

In my last job (private sector) no one worked on the holidays, but they did a calculation once a year and those who worked on Mondays and had over-benefitted had a deduction made annually from their pay packet, all those who didn't work Mondays got compensated and therefore got a bonus. This was all set out in our contracts so you knew before you agreed to your new hours. The amount each year basically depended what days Christmas and New Year fell on.

But if OP's employment handbook/employment contract states terms more generous than those required by legislation (pro rata for part time worked at 5.6 weeks inclusive of bank holidays) then the OP should get the bank holidays I think.

It sounds as though the wording in the handbook is not very well written. OP - I'd check again with HR.

nocake is right, just one thing to add - there was legislation and it changed relatively recently (start of 2011 from memory) so it is possible reason you have a different version is that it just wasn't updated.

I have a friend who works Monday, Tuesday and Friday and last year ended up having to work extra days to pay back some of her holiday as ALL the bank holidays fell on her working days. she was entitled to 20+9 * 3/5 = 17.5, of which 9 had to be taken on the BH's leaving 8.5days for the rest of the year.

personally I would go for Tues, Weds or Weds, Thurs.

And this is why I won't be working Mondays when I go back 3 days in November!

If you don't work Mondays you should find that you get some extra time off to make up for missing out on bank holidays using the same pro rata calculations quoted above.

Even if OP's handbook states something more generous, it is open to challenge by those who lose out, ie the full timers, I would have thought.

I didn't work Mondays and it meant an extra couple of hundred quid in my pay packet once a year, which was lovely.

Hi all. Thanks for the replies. I think I may have an older copy of the handbook then. I expected that I would have been sent an update if there had been changes & I checked with hr & no mention of pro rata. Feeling a bit annoyed I thought I had the correct info & now apparently don't. Was all happy with the decision to work 2 days at the start of the week, 2 days off, then mop up Friday.

My boss has specifically asked me to do reissue so have to work that. Do I have any bargaining chips that he specifically wants me to work a day that bank holidays fall on or that I did not have updated handbook & wrong information from yt? (grasping at straws)

I'd I do decide to work mondays anyway, is the only down side that I will have less annual leave to take at my own choice of time? I will not have fewer days off in total with annual leave & bank hols combined?

Pastabee, I don't know if my work would owe me if I did not work mondays when a bank holiday occurred. Of course they have not mentioned that!

Oops, couple of typos:

My boss has specifically asked me to do Fridays so have to do that.

Wrong information from HR (not yr)

Hope you're all still following.

Difficulty is preserving good relations is important too.

Aparently bank holidays aren't mandatory! Usually if you work PT they are pro-rata, so entitled to 4 if you work 2.5 days a week. Usually its bundled into youjr annual leave and worked out with that.

I work Mondays and Fridays, so lose out. But my boss is happy for me to do a Tuesday or Thursday instead for some of those weeks, so I don't have to use my annual leave. Would that be possible for you, OP?

It depends how formal your company is as well. The job I referred to previously with the pro rata bonus / penalty was a multinational and had to have a fixed set of rules for everybody. Whereas I now work a 0.25FTE contract for a very small company but can work on any days I like, I normally work 3 hours or so on each of Tues/Weds/Thur. When there is a bank holiday week I just reduce my total hours by 1/5th or 2/5, same as everyone else and this works fine on trust. So there are certainly different approaches which work.

This is exactly why I don't work Mondays. I'm entitled to 60% of the years BH's (I do 3 days a week), and that's just tagged onto my annual leave entitlement.

I work four days tues-fri and get pro rata bank holidays.
My colleague works four days mon-thurs and gets pro rata bank holidays.

So it's fair.