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Holiday Pay Accrued While Long-Term Absent Confusion

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  • 30-09-2016 2:39am
    #1
    Skintwin
    Registered Users Posts: 584 ✭✭✭


    Hi there everyone,

    Sorry for what is sure to be a long-winded post, but I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around this and I was wondering if anyone on here has been in the same situation.

    I was long-term absent from work from February 2015 until June 2016. I returned in June and was working there until last week (I'm moving at the weekend). Although I work part-time, I am contracted for 4 weeks holiday per year. So, as far as I can tell, I am entitled to holidays accrued between August 2015 and when I returned to work (June 2016) and what has accrued since I have been back because of an amendment to the Organisation of Working Time Act. I was told before I decided to move that I had built up 'a lot' of holidays and I needed to take some. I took two weeks at the end of August/start of September and was told that I had three accrued weeks remaining. One to be taken before Christmas and two next year. I am on set hours per week contract and although my worked hours occasionally go over this amount, it's normally bang on the set hours.

    The holiday pay is calculated a little weirdly. The hours that are paid for the holiday week are the average of the previous 16 weeks. Because I ad been absent from work for some of those 16 weeks, I received 12.75 hours holiday pay for each. That I get. However, now that I have finished working there, I received my last wages from them and instead of paying me for the outstanding accrued holiday weeks, they have deducted 5.25 hours for '-holiday pay'.

    I'm quite confused by this, because according to the amendment made to the working time act last year, I have been building up holidays while out sick, and should have been paid for them once I left, because I left within 15 months of the end of the leave year (this ran April 2015-March 2016) Well, this is my understanding anyway.

    Has anyone else been in a similar situation to this and what happened/how was it resolved? I'd quite like to have all my ducks in a row and know if this has happened other people too before I call them tomorrow to ask about it, just in case I get fobbed off or something. It adds up to over €700 - quite a substantial amount! I've quoted some of the amendment, in case I've taken it up completely wrongly!

    Thanks a million!
    The amendment to the legislation was made by way of section 86(1) of the Workplace Relations Act 2015. It will have the following effects:

    Statutory annual leave entitlement accrues during a period of certified sick leave.
    An annual leave carryover period of 15 months after a leave year will apply to those employees who could not, due to illness, take annual leave during the relevant leave year or during the normal carryover period of 6 months.
    On termination of employment, payment in lieu of untaken accrued annual leave will apply to leave which was untaken as a result of illness in circumstances where the employee leaves the employment within a period of 15 months following the end of the leave year during which the statutory leave entitlement accrued.
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