Employer reducing holiday allowance while furloughed

Jeff_the_Mexican

My employer has stated "Salaried employees who are furloughed are required to take 1/12 of their remaining holiday entitlement for each month that they are furloughed." Can they do this? That's 6 days holiday used up so far being shut in the house.   

poppy12345

Yes, providing they give you twice the amount of notice it's perfectly fine. There's a lot of employers doing this at the moment. They must also pay you 100% of your wages during annual leave.

gaynork

I work for an NHS dental practice. Whilst we have been unable to work, we have been paid in full for which we are very grateful.  We returned to work, to cover emergencies only, in the middle of June.  However, my employer is now saying that annual leave accrued during June, depending on how many hours we normally work compared to how many we have actually worked, will be taken off our normal holiday allowance. Can they do this? 

Grumpy_chap

The employer should give 2 days' notice for every day of annual leave they decide when you will take it.
On balance, I would accept it as overall you are "up".  Although the rules say you accrue annual leave even while on furlough, that is hardly fair to the employer.

gaynork

We have already had to take 1 week of “forced” annual leave in June. 

[Deleted User]

gaynork said:

We have already had to take 1 week of “forced” annual leave in June. 

That is largely irrlevant, if your employer had annual leave in alignment with the calendar year they could make you take it all off in January and February should they choose. When annual leave is taken is entirely at the discretion of the employer. 

Jeremy535897

MadMattUK said:

gaynork said:

We have already had to take 1 week of “forced” annual leave in June. 

That is largely irrlevant, if your employer had annual leave in alignment with the calendar year they could make you take it all off in January and February should they choose. When annual leave is taken is entirely at the discretion of the employer. 

That assumes the contract of employment is silent on the matter. Even if it is, I think there is a question mark over whether you could do that (no time off at Christmas even?). See:
https://uklabourlawblog.com/2020/04/06/furloughing-and-fundamental-rights-the-case-of-paid-annual-leave-by-alan-bogg-and-michael-ford/

[Deleted User]

@Jeremy535897
I think for some people it might become quite messy and there will probably end up being a test case before we know for sure, however I think the people arguing about holiday will be the ones at the front of the queue for redundancies. If I was an employee, having just had 4-5 months off on full (or 80%) pay and in the current jobs market I would not be arguing about annual leave no matter how secure I thought my job was.

As someone with employees, who have been nothing but reasonable in relation to this whole mess and who all, without hesitation agreed to take their holiday pro-rata so that they were not trying to fit a year's annual leave into a 3-4 month window at the end of the year it does seem that a lot of people seem to have lost any perspective of where business is at the moment and what the economic outlook is for the next year or two. 

Jeremy535897

MadMattUK said:

@Jeremy535897
I think for some people it might become quite messy and there will probably end up being a test case before we know for sure, however I think the people arguing about holiday will be the ones at the front of the queue for redundancies. If I was an employee, having just had 4-5 months off on full (or 80%) pay and in the current jobs market I would not be arguing about annual leave no matter how secure I thought my job was.

As someone with employees, who have been nothing but reasonable in relation to this whole mess and who all, without hesitation agreed to take their holiday pro-rata so that they were not trying to fit a year's annual leave into a 3-4 month window at the end of the year it does seem that a lot of people seem to have lost any perspective of where business is at the moment and what the economic outlook is for the next year or two. 

I agree there has to be a balance, and people who have been paid 80% even of their wages over 12 weeks should accept that a reasonable part of this should be regarded as holiday (if they are paid correctly for it), and should take realistic amounts of holiday while their employers get up and running again (although if nobody is allowed any holiday for the rest of the year, the accommodation industry will collapse). It isn't acceptable though for an employer to force all his employees to take all their holiday entitlement in January and February. There's no balance in that.