Holiday pay for freelance journalists.

[Spidermama]

I know there's something about this on the NUJ website but I can't find it. Does anyone know how I go about getting holiday pay as a freelancer who works almost exclusively for the same people?

Spidermama I assume you'd qualify as a 'worker' in this link?

Is your employer refusing to let you have paid holiday?

Not refusing flowery. I just haven't got round to claiming yet as I only recently discovered I could.

So since I've not been shortlisted for the staff job I applied for there, my motivation to get all I'm due has been somewhat bolstered.

That's not the link I was after actually. It was on the NUJ website but I can't seem to track it down now.

Try the BECTU website - its aimed at people working in TV but the law is the same. Just make sure that when you establish what your rate is, you are quite clear that it does not "include" holiday pay already.

• this is a favoured trick of production managers negotiating pay in TV circles and is neither reasonable, nor legal!

This link may be quite helpful and has got a couple of links off from it that I didn't have time to look at. www.londonfreelance.org/fl/0711work.html

Most big publishing companies have holiday policies and procedures for freelancers. Usually it works out as 0.5 day's paid holiday for every five days worked. Be careful though, as a lot of places have set time limits when they'll pay holiday, ie only that calendar year, although I think according to the law you can claim for years back.

Probably best just to ask them what their policy is and it might just mean sending them an invoice for holiday owed.