Part time and being made to take holiday to make up hours over Christmas.

[Lubyloo]

I work part time 2 days a week. It was agreed before I accepted the job that I would only work Thursdays and Fridays however my contract simply states my total contracted hours. Our offices are open for shorter working hours over Christmas which means that I can't fit all my hours in on those two days. I have been told that I therefore have to use up some of my holiday to make up my hours. It's only 3 hours so quite a minor gripe but it's irritating me that I have to do this.It's not my decision to close the offices early that week.

As we are closed Tues and Wednesday then the only day I could make up the hours is Christmas Eve. Even if I could arrange childcare it really does not make sense financially to travel in to work for just 3 hours. Are they within their rights to make me use up my precious holiday entitlement?

What are the other people doing to make up their full time hours with the shorter week? Is it paid or unpaid?

I used to work 2 1/2 days or 50%

The way I used to look at it was on a short week I should work half of what a full time person did, for half the pay. I used to work Tuesday, Weds and thursdays. So if there was a bank holiday on a monday everyone else would only need to work 4 days that week so I would only need to work 2 days.

When we had a shut down I would get half the bank hols and take half of the holiday time.

If you dont work on the days bank holidays fall you should stil be entitled to their equivalent as time in leiu. So even though you dont work on Tuesday or Wed you should still get 2/5 of the time the other people get for xmas day and boxing day.

hope this makes sense

How does it work with Bank Holidays at the moment? This will probably have some bearing on the situation.

Doesn't sound right, if they have decided to shorten hours on those days you work. You should benefit form that as much as everyone else. Our office is closed from last Friday until January 2nd at no cost of holiday, whether FT or PT, then I'm taking Wednesday off (I do MTTF) as usual.

It really depends how your holiday entitlement is made up.

I work p/t and don't work Mondays so I take all the bank holiday hours as holiday instead. This means that I need to use a holiday hours to cover christmas day and boxing day, but am not losing out as its all included in my holiday entitlement iyswim.

Could you cover the hours in January or does it have to be done before the end of the year ?

It depends on your contract. Part-timers where I work get Bank Hols etc pro rata. So if you normally work 20 hours, your BH entitlement is 7.4/37 x 22.

What it means is that if you work the same number of hours 5 days a week you get the BH day off like the FT staff. If you work only a few days you either owe time or get a credit, depending which days you normally work.

I think this is probably where you've fallen foul of it. It's really annoying but you probably can't do anything about it.

Thank you - I wasn't expecting a response so quickly! I don't know how things work with bank holidays as I only started there in September so we haven't had one yet.

It sounds very nit picking to worry about 3.5 hours but I just feel like it is another way I'm being disadvantaged for being part time. I have worked there full time for a couple of weeks whilst training. The others on my course were full time and somedays we didn't start until 10am and often finished early at 4pm or 4.30pm. Where the others got paid for their full 37.5 h hours I only got paid for 30 which effectively means I lost a full days pay but still had to pay for DD's nursery.

I know it is sometimes a bit working p/t.

I don't work Mondays and our office is shutting early on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve, I asked HR if there were any plans for people who didn't work those days to recuperate the lost holiday hours and they said no as it wasn't an official holiday. So just to make sure I am not totally missing out I have changed my days to work NYE. Oh and plus they had a christmas lunch on a monday, I managed to get childcare as my boss suggested I should go, but it was a bit annoying sitting there in my own time, knowing that everyone else was getting paid for it.

Oh well, I suppose its worth it because we get more time to spend with our children.

Surely this is how it works for full timers and part timers.

When our offices are closed we have the option of using our holiday to cover those hours, or having no pay that week. We know that we have to save x number of days for Xmas.

I work Mondays & Tuesdays so as our office closed last Wednesday I have to use 1 day of my holiday for today, then tomorrow is the bank holiday.

Full timers have to use their holiday for Thurs, Fri, today and get bank holiay entitlement for Xmas and boxing day.

Oh dear, this is a good question for Flowerybeanbag.

It doesn't seem right to be that you have to use up your holiday time but i don't know enough about employment law. The thing is, Xmas Eve is not a Bank Holiday and so i guess is counted as a normal working day. So your employer may be within their rights to ask you to work. Very irritating to have to go in for three hours though! Sometimes, it's not fair but legally its acceptable. Sorry.

Though it does not seem fair it is their right.

You can find out more at www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/WorkingHoursAndTimeOff/DG_10029788

Hi,

You cant legally be discriminated against because you work part-time. You work on Thursdays and Fridays (neither of which was a bank holiday Christmas week) so everything depends on what the situation was with full-timers.

If full-time workers contracts only state their weekly hours and they were getting to work shorter days on the Thursday and Friday without having to take holiday to make up their hours then you are being discriminated against as a part-time worker which is pretty much illegal. That said, you've only been there since September so you couldn't go running off to an employment tribunal! However, you could raise an informal grievance.

The bank holiday side of things is quite seperate but relevant to you to - you are entitled to pro-rata the bank holidays that full-time workers get, whether you normally work on those days or not. Your contract should state your entitlement to bank holidays. No-one has any legal entitlement to bank holidays though, some companies dont give them at all or some include them in annual entitlement. The full-time legal entitlement to holidays is 24 days per year (from 1 Oct 2007) but this includes bank holidays.

Hope this helps - it's a bit late and I'm tired but I think all the info is correct (not an employment law specialist but do work in HR). I know this thread died off a bit last week but it may still be relevant to you lubyloo.

I think the stuff about bank holidays/holiday entitlement is a bit of a red herring in this case. As I understand it, they made the decision to shut the office too early to enable you to work your normal amount of hours on your normal day? So the same would be the case for a full time person as well? As gr1973 says, you can't be treated differently because you are pt. so if a ft person who normally works a full day was not required to make up the time, then they can't ask you to.