Confused about Holiday on a Part-Time/Termtime-ish Contract

[jodee]

Hoping someone can give me some advice please - I started working for a solicitor who is a sole practioner on 8 Jan, I am the only employee (legal sec). I don't have a contract yet - he went solo last summer and up until I started work he had a temp. He has got an old proforma contract from his previous firm that will need completely rejigging, but basically I need to read through it, sort out the holiday question and retype it myself!

Before I started I told him that I wanted a term-time contract, but I would work through the halfterms and only take 4 out of the 6 weeks in the summer. I work a 25 hour week (5 hrs per day, 5 days a week).

I've looked at the CAB site but am still no clearer. Can anybody please tell me how much paid holiday I would be entitled to in a year? Thank you!

you are entitled to 4 weeks paid holiday a year, i'll see if I can find you a link, I don't know if it will be different thou as it's term time, I don't see why it should be.

holiday pay thats' from ACAS, i'd give them a buzz if you're not sure on something.

you are entitled to the same holiday as a full-time employee because you work every day, have a look on he ACAS website or the DTI

By term-time only, do you mean that the 4 wks hol in summer is unpaid leave, and you want additional holiday on top of that? Or do you mean you want to take those 4 wks as paid holiday?

Your holiday is basically up to your employer. I'm in a similar position - there's just me and the boss, and I work part-time too.

If agree with him - say, that 25 days holiday a yr, plus bank holidays is a reasonable allowance. Then if you're only working 48 wks of the year (with 4 wks unpaid leave), then a reasonable allowance would be 25 days/52 * 48 = 23 days.

Though of course in every instance a "day's holiday" = your normal working day of 5 hrs.

If you do, intend to, or want to work flexitime, it can be more helpful to express your holiday allowances in hours rather than days.

HTH!

Oh - I've just re-read it. I presume you also want to take 2 wks at Easter and Christmas as unpaid holiday?

So your calculations would be 25*52/44 = 21 days paid holiday (in addition to your 8 wks unpaid).

This is getting complex, isn't it? You need to sit down with your children's school holiday sheet, and work out how many days they are on holiday each year, and what paid/unpaid leave you actually want!

Don't forget when 'negotiating' that summer, Christmas, and Easter between them include 6 bank holidays which he would normally have to pay you for. ALSO he may be from a hard-working legal background where 16 days holiday was considered normal ... it's NOT nowadays. 20 is minimum. 25 is about average I think. Public sector often get 30.

HTH

Thank you, munnzie/lmb/roisin, it is all a little complicated! So even though I don't work a full week, because I go into work 5 days I'm entitled to 4 weeks paid hol then, it's not pro rata to the hours I do?
I will check out the ACAS site (probably give them a call).
roisin, you are right, I need to sit down with the school holiday sheet and work it out properly. So you are in a similar position to me - is that your working arrangement as mentioned in your first post? Can I ask what happens if you/kids are sick?

In terms of the pro rata holidays for part time working; it does take a bit of getting your head round. Just to forget the term-time bit for a mo:

You are working 5 hrs a day, 5 days a week. So if a standard annual holiday entitlement is 20 days, then you would be entitled to 100 hrs holiday pay. (Whereas a full-time person would be entitled to almost twice that). BUT for you to take a week's holiday, you would need to take 25 hrs holiday, not 37.5 hrs ... Am I making sense here! I know what I mean, but it is hard to express.

If you were working 3 full days a week instead, then you would be due only 3/5 of the holiday entitlement expressed in days. But for each day you took as holiday you would get 7 hrs pay.

It IS pro rata to the hours you do. And so are your bank holidays.

Why couldn't I express it so concisely?

jodee, you are entitled to four weeks paid holidays for every year that you are employed. As roisin and Sofia have said, for you a week is five hours multiplied by five (for the five days a week that you work) to get a total of 25 hours pay per week. The unfair bit, for employers, of the way the legislation has been interpreted is that you continue to accrue entitlement to paid holidays whilst you are employed by the company even though you may be on unpaid leave. So, if you have agree to take eight weeks unpaid leave each year, you still accrue the four weeks paid holidays in each year.

In other words, you still get four weeks paid holidays each year but for you, a week is 25 hours instead of 35/37/40 hours.

I work part time and have a month's unpaid leave and spent many many months back and forth with my employer's extremely inarticulate accountant trying to figure out what he was trying to say...And I have a degree in economics and an
MBA and have run small businesses for years.

Sofia, CAT me if you think I can help - but I must warn you that I don't have an MBA and the running I manage is running round in circles

Jodee, When you have figured out your holidays, work out what your annual salary would be, and ask your employer to pay it in 12 equal monthly payments, that way you will still have some money coming when you're not working. If you leave before a complete leave year has finished, re-calculate your salary for the months that you were there and make sure that you are paid any pay that is due, as you would have been paid less for those months because you have arranged for your salary to be equal monthly payments, does that make sense? [confused emoticon]. This is how term time contracts work for school admin staff in the LEA I work for.

Just to complicate things, in the civil service dept I work for, term time contracts are not considered to be part time. I get all my 6 weeks annual leave allowance and then take unpaid special leave to cover the other holidays. So, bank holidays are pro rataed but not my leave allowance. The contract is a nightmare to work out (I leave it to someone else to do) but it matters because if I take 2 weeks special leave, I have to include weekends ie take 12 days, unlike the 10 days annual leave I would need.

That's probably not helped you has it?

Thanks to everyone for their input, I've printed this all out and will try and come up with something to present to my boss tomorrow (hopefully!).

SofiaAmes, the accountant is coming in tomorrow so will see what she says, she is supposed to be bringing in my first payslips, but I have a feeling of doom already as apparently she has worked out my salary on a 20 hour week instead of 25, sigh.

Hope the pg is going well, Tinker!