Should I take my employer to court ?

[debbiedoodoo]

I have a case against my employers for refusing holiday pay or holiday entitlement for the last 3 years.

I work in a small nursery where there are 10 members of staff and we are all in the same position. Our contracts state we have no entitlement to paid holiday. We raised this with them on Monday and they have come back to us saying they will give us paid holiday entitlement from Jan 1st this year but they will not backdate it.

I have taken legal advice and I know I would win if I take them to court but it is very difficult working in such a small company as it would cause such bad feeling and a terrible working atmosphere. On the other hand I cannot afford to just write off the money.

I would really like to try and persuade them to give me what they owe without having to resort to legal action but I really dont know how to go about approaching them.

All of the staff have completely lost faith in them as employers and we all feel totally demotivated.

Any advice please ?

Very, very few cases go all the way to a court hearing, most settle.

I suspect that as soon as your employer got legal advice of their own they'd be advised to settle.

Are the other 9 employees in agreement with you? If so, I'd suggest seeing an employment specialist lawyer (acting for all the employees) and getting them to write to the employer setting out the claim.

Employer will then get their own advice and probably be advised to settle.