Part time working, banks holidays and annual leave - what is fair?

[Miloarmadillo1]

I have worked for the same small company more than 10 years, returning part time after mat leave. I will work 2 long shifts during the week, Monday and Friday to suit the company, plus some weekend rota, averaging 25 hrs per week. Full timers have a full day off each week, and get 22 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays.
Manager is saying that I get 2/5 of the entitlement (which I dispute, it should either be 2/3 as I work 2/3 of the hours, or 1/2 as I have to take 2 days in order to get a week off rather than 4 for the full timers) The weekends are a bit of a red herring, they get shuffled around everybody's holidays so you don't take annual leave to have a weekend off.
He is then saying he is taking any BH that falls on a Monday or Friday off my entitlement, as I will be paid and won't work them. So he is saying I get 2/5 of 30 - 7 = 5 days annual leave.
That means I can take 2 weeks or long weekends ( since a fri-mon would cost me 2 days holiday) in a year, the stat minimum is 5.6 including bank holidays.
I'm in such a muddle with it but it certainly doesn't feel fair. If I worked Tues + Wed instead I'd be getting 2/5 or 1/2 of 22, so 9 or 11 days.

Thanks in advance if you read that far, and advice please!

Bank holidays are a common source of confusion for part timers.

Employers are under no obligation to give you bank holidays off. So the reality is that full time employees have 30 days holiday per annum and the company forces them to take 8 bank holidays as part of that. As you normally work Mondays and Fridays there are 7 bank holidays that fall on your working days. The company will force you to take those out of your total holiday entitlement of 12 days. If you worked Tuesday and Wednesday instead you would still be getting the same total number of days off - 2/5 of 30, NOT 22, so 12 days in total. The difference is that fewer of your normal working days would fall on bank holidays so you would be able to use more days whenever you chose. But regardless of which days of the week you choose to work you will have 92 working days and 12 days holiday.

I don't want to comment on whether or not 12 days is the correct figure as I don't feel I fully understand the situation. Are you saying that full time employees only actually work 4 days per week?

I work pt and for each bh I get 20% of my standard working weekly hours. This matches my colleagues.

If I want a bh holiday off I use up 8.5 hours, so I'm in fact out of pocket, so to speak, but it is fair and I'm ok with that.

You are entitled to the same proportion of annual leave and bank holidays as you work. I think when you're part time and not working over a standard 5 day week it's often easier to think in terms of hours. How many hours do you work per week? What fraction is that of the full time hours?

If a full timer does 35 hours and gets 30 days holiday/BH then they get 210 hours of holiday a year.

If you were doing 25 hours a week you're working 5/7 of full time so you'd get 150 hours of holiday a year. But yes you can be compelled to use it on public holidays when company doesn't open etc.

There is a free phone ACAS number that will be able to advise you.
I called them last week about a fairly similar issue.

This is why hours based entitlement is so much more transparent.

Base entitlement seems to be 22 days holiday + 8 BH = 30 days.

If you are doing 2 long days vs their 4, that comes out as 0.5 of full time. But I wonder how many hours they are doing per week? That would make this easier to work out.

If you are doing half the hours, then your leave entitlement would be half, so 11 + 4 = 15. Given that all bank holidays fall on your 'days' then you'd use 4 holiday days on bank holidays, which would leave 7 days.

You need to ask for a full break down of the calculation then raise a grievance if necessary.

Could it be the case that the weekends are being seen (wrongly) as casual overtime, so leave is being calculated on your core hours on Monday and Friday only?

this should be done according to hours

are there no other PT staff where you work? I had this once - I worked 2 x PT jobs to make up 6 days a week, 8 hours a day.

one of them calculated the holidays by days and I was the only part timer employed. Eventually I persuaded them to see that we had to do it by hours because it made no sense otherwise. But when we got that extra BH for - what for? some Royal event? - I was only allowed 3/5 of it. Well, officially, i was only allowed 3/5 but my manager told them I had worked extra hours to make up for the 2/5

I didn't know there was an ACAS advice line - do ring them then because it does sound as if you are being short changed and also as if they haven't got a handle on doing this sensibly.

You should get 25 hours x 5.6 weeks = 140 hours.

Some of the days paid will be bank hols. Calculate in hours not days.

You are entitled to be treated equivalently to full time employees pro-rata to your hours worked. If full-time employees get bank holidays off without it affecting their 22 days then you are entitled to a pro-rata share of that.

Your colleagues are getting 30 days a year including bank holidays, which is 6 weeks off in total. You should be able to take 6 weeks off in total including those pesky bank holidays which normally fall on a monday or friday - assuming that in a particular year the variable Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day all managed to miss Mondays and fridays, the other 5 bank holidays would all be Monday or Friday accounting for 2.5 "weeks" of your 6 week entitlement.

So you have 3.5 "weeks" of entitlement left - which is 7 days.
It would be less than 7 in a year when the other 3 bank holidays fall on a mon or fri.

Thank you everyone. The full timers work average 40 hour per week, the say off during the week compensates for weekend hours.

You have given me some good input on what is fair and I will negotiate from there.

So you're on a 0.625 contract. Which gives you 18.75 days including BH. So 10.75 without BH.

0300 123 1100 ACAS free helpline.

What are you actually contracted to?