Holiday Pay

Philliskirk

With the recent announcement about overtime being including in holiday pay, my company has now starting taking your last 3 months overtime into account when issuing holiday pay. However since I claim childcare vouchers (£243) a month, they have told me that I am not entitled to any extra holiday pay unless I have earned more than £243 in overtime. Surely this can not be right? The childcare vouchers are a government scheme to benefit employees with children. However they are using this to there advantage so as not to pay me any extra money. Any advice would be appreciated

SeduLOUs

When you get childcare vouchers you voluntarily reduce your salary in order to get them instead.

You would have to earn an additional £243 per month from overtime in order to to get your pay back to the 'normal' level it was at before you got the childcare vouchers, and this is probably what they mean.

Philliskirk

Thanks for the reply.
I understand that, but why should that be taken into consideration? Isn't it a government scheme and so not costing the company any money? Yet they are benefiting by not paying me the extra holiday pay. Should it not be calculated on my salary paid before the deduction?

SeduLOUs

Philliskirk wrote: »

Should it not be calculated on my salary paid before the deduction?

No, because that isn't your salary anymore.

The company still pays for your vouchers, they aren't provided for free by the government. They do save a bit of money by not paying a much employer's NI but some of this is eaten up by admin fees of the scheme.

Asking for holiday to be based on old salary would be basically the same as dropping to part time hours and then asking to still be paid full time holidays.

tamiami

My husbands employers have now made everyone stick to their contracted 16 hour week to avoid holiday pay accrual, where before they did an average of 25 to 35 hours per week.


So introducing holiday pay on past hours worked has made us worse off. Would rather forfeit the holiday pay and keep more hours.

SeduLOUs

tamiami wrote: »

So introducing holiday pay on past hours worked has made us worse off. Would rather forfeit the holiday pay and keep more hours.

I can understand the frustration but your 'overtime' isn't quite as significant as some cases so you didn't feel the full force of how bad it was when they got this wrong. My partner had an 8 hour contract at a well known retailer but ALWAYS worked 40 hours per week. If he took a weeks holiday he would only get a day's pay, so no staff ever took holidays except for emergencies because they simply couldn't afford to.

Assuming your partner is not on minimum wage, could he offer to work the overtime at a lower rate of pay to compensate for the additional holidays? The same 'value' could change hands overall (either with partner getting the money or more paid time off), and the employer would be meeting the requirements of providing the additional holiday entitlement.

Alternatively it might be time to look for a different job with a better employer (I appreciate that this isn't simple though!)