Happy New Year!
Is tomorrow any different from any other day?
Question: Is tomorrow any different from any other day?
Answer: Of course it is - it’s New Year’s Day, let’s party on down and see it in with a bang! - but from an employment law perspective it’s just another day like any other.
It is called a Bank Holiday but that does not bestow any special rights on employees, or obligations on employers, to make it stand out from the crowd. It’s the first of another 365 days we have to get through to put another year under our belts and bring us one step closer to retirement. Hmmm - how gloomy!
So, what if you have to work on New Year’s Day?
Many workers receive extra pay and/or time off in lieu of working bank holidays and that’s fine. It’s nice to be compensated when everybody else seems to be out enjoying themselves seeing in the New Year, probably more so in England this year due to the tighter covid restrictions in the remaining home nations.
But, I receive many complaints from people bemoaning they have to work bank holidays for nothing extra and my answer is this:
If you are not contractually entitled to additional pay or time off for working a bank holiday you are paid the same as on any other working day.
There is no legislation which provides any extras for working bank holidays, so it’s down to the goodwill of your employer.
Every worker is entitled to a minimum 28 days statutory holiday. This is a fairly generous entitlement compared to many other countries. It could be far worse, you could live in America where there is no statutory holiday entitlement! Many American employers provide it, but even then, it’s only an average of 10 days per year.
Our statutory holiday came about thanks to the European Working Time Directive which, amongst others, provides under Article 7:
Annual leave
Member States shall take the measures necessary to ensure that every worker is entitled to paid annual leave of at least four weeks in accordance with the conditions for entitlement to, and granting of, such leave laid down by national legislation and/or practice.
Note it states four weeks leave (20 days), but we get 5.6 (28 days) why is that?
This is because the Directive was introduced into UK law by the Working Time Regulations, and since 1 April 2009 a new Regulation 13A was added which provided additional leave of 1.6 weeks (s.13A(2)(e)).
Why was this added you ask? There’s a simple explanation - 1.6 weeks is 8 days. There are 8 bank holidays. The government, in their wisdom, decided to grant us all additional holiday to take into account the bank holidays, so we went over and above the entitlement granted us by the Working Time Directive, so hats off to the government on this one!
So, in effect we do receive our bank holidays, but not necessarily on the bank holidays. It’s just another day of holiday to be taken when your employer allows.
I hope you have a great evening seeing in the New Year. Sadly, I’ll be playing very loud music to drown out the noise of the fireworks which scare my dogs to death! You can’t beat the the last 10 minutes of Dire Straits Telegraph Road to send you to a whole new place - and the dogs too.