working p/t 4 days a week. Bank hol 8th May being treated as my unpaid day off!!!

spencer999

Hi folks.  Working 4 days a week 6 hours a day in the national public sector.  My rest day rotates and is never the same day in successive weeks.  Normally when there is a bank holiday, or Christmas, New Year etc I work 3 days as the bank holiday is obviously a paid holiday.  NOW my schedule says I am working Tuesday to Friday next week so for the first time ever my bank holiday is UNPAID!  HR are trying to explain why this is, but as usual they talk in riddles and non sequiturs and I'm getting nowhere.  Am I right in being aggrieved or have I gone daft??

Exodi

I think employees have a misinformed view of how bank holidays actually work.

While employees may think they 'just get them off paid' - in reality, the employer has already allocated part of an employees holiday entitlement to cover them. So you've effectively had your holiday used on bank holidays without your knowledge or approval.

Depending on timing, it's not unlikely that the bank holiday hadn't been announced yet when the employer calculated their staffs annual holiday entitlement. Therefore many employers have been put in a situation where they couldn't use an employees holiday entitlement to cover the holiday beforehand. This now means they either pay the employees wages out of their own pocket, or they offer it unpaid (of course employees remain entitled to take it as holiday). It's not just you - I think you'll find this will apply to a lot of people.

In your employers defense, it would have been pretty unfair on the staff you rotate with, if you just got given a magic extra free day of holiday and they didn't, by sole virtue of the rotation - which is probably why the employer chose to do it unpaid.

Undervalued

spencer999 said:

Hi folks.  Working 4 days a week 6 hours a day in the national public sector.  My rest day rotates and is never the same day in successive weeks.  Normally when there is a bank holiday, or Christmas, New Year etc I work 3 days as the bank holiday is obviously a paid holiday.  NOW my schedule says I am working Tuesday to Friday next week so for the first time ever my bank holiday is UNPAID!  HR are trying to explain why this is, but as usual they talk in riddles and non sequiturs and I'm getting nowhere.  Am I right in being aggrieved or have I gone daft??

I wouldn't say you have gone daft, as it is a popular misunderstanding, but your HR are almost certainly correct. It does depend on the actual wording of your contract but they presumably know what that says.

spencer999

I think I see what you mean...kind of

All the full time employees are getting a paid day off, I get an unpaid day off.  I didn't realise this eats into their holiday entitlement?

I'm working for DWP and my line manager admits she doesn't know the rules around PT staff.  A bunch of us moved over from Serco last year under TUPE.

**I think the question centres around what a bank holiday means for employees.  Is it a paid day off or not?**

Sorry if I come across as the usual overpaid and underworked public sector complainant!

Exodi

spencer999 said:

I think I see what you mean...kind of

All the full time employees are getting a paid day off, I get an unpaid day off.  I didn't realise this eats into their holiday entitlement?

I'm working for DWP and my line manager admits she doesn't know the rules around PT staff.  A bunch of us moved over from Serco last year under TUPE.

**I think the question centres around what a bank holiday means for employees.  Is it a paid day off or not?**

Sorry if I come across as the usual overpaid and underworked public sector complainant!

**I think the question centres around what a bank holiday means for employees.  Is it a paid day off or not?**

You've asked the same question, but to avoid giving you the same answer (that it is generally paid from your holiday entitlement) - it depends on your contract (as obviously not all public sectors are the same - my partner works for the home office and bank holidays are considered a normal day).

Either this will be defined contractually:

For example, my companies general contract states the following: "If the number of bank and public holidays that fall on your normal working days exceeds 1.6 working weeks, you may either elect to take the additional time off out of your annual holiday entitlement or the time off will be unpaid."

1.6 working weeks for someone working 5 days a week is 8 days (the normal number of bank holidays in a week). This year there are 9 so we would be within our rights contractually to also give the time off unpaid.

Or they may have made a discretionary decision:

For example, it could be that they've decided to swallow the extra cost and give the extra bank holiday free to full time staff. It could be that they've identified it would be unfair to give a free day off to only the part time staff who happened to be working on that day, so they decided to not swallow the extra cost of the bank holiday for part time staff.

It could also have been identified that giving a full time employee with 260 working days in a year one extra day off (0.3%) is more reasonable than giving a part time employee that only works Mondays with 52 working days a year (for example) the day off (1.9%). You may argue that you work 4 days a week but then the question becomes 'where do you draw the line?' - people that work 3 days a week might feel hard done by, etc.

Really to start I think you should read your employment contract, but I can guess what it will say (and that the additional day off given to full time staff was a discretionary decision).

I don't think anything thinks public sector works are overpaid and underworked? Quite the opposite.

Andy_L

It comes down to does your contact say

X days leave plus Y bank holidays (don't get the "extra" BH)
X days leave including BH (don't get the "extra" BH)
X Days leave plus (an unspecified number) BH (will get the extra)

Undervalued

Andy_L said:

It comes down to does your contact say

X days leave plus Y bank holidays (don't get the "extra" BH)
X days leave including BH (don't get the "extra" BH)
X Days leave plus (an unspecified number) BH (will get the extra)

Indeed.

It can work both ways. Years ago I worked part time for a large organisation on Mondays and Fridays. As we know most bank holidays fall on a Monday or Friday. Their HR produced a contract that was worded 25 days holiday per year (pro rata so I got ten days) PLUS bank holidays that fall on normal working days! I wasn't complaining although they did briefly try to back track on it.

Meanwhile a colleague who worked the other three days (Tue, Wed and Thur) got the same contract so he got 15 days plus any bank holidays that fell on his working days - so very few, just Christmas day and / or Boxing day in some years! He argued, successfully after a bit of a struggle, that his contract wasn't valid as it is unlawful to treat a part time employee less favourably than their full time equivalent.

Eventually he got a rewritten contract that gave him bank holidays pro rata to a full time post. Better, but he still wasn't happy as his contract was less favourable than mine! He got nowhere with that argument as the comparison is to a full time post and not to a different part time arrangement.

He left after a couple of years and by that time HR had got their act together when it came to recruiting a replacement.