Holiday pay zero hours contract

[maddie210]

Hi, any advice appreciated 

I am an nhs bank worker so although I am on a zero hour contract I am never short of work.

Up until recently my hol pay was included in my wages every month and on average the holiday pay was paid at the rate of my night duty as I only work nights. They changed it so we now have to ask for our holiday pay when we need it and since then all hol pay received is only paid at flat day rate. I queried this and was told no that's right it does not matter that you only work nights. 

 

I have looked into it and took advice of acas who state the law us hol pay should be paid on average earnings over the 12 weeks previous, ....is there any exception to this?, I dont know how to go about this with my employer, any help appreciated 

[Emmzzi]

I would send this link, advise you have had a chat with acas, and ask them to look again. 
https://www.acas.org.uk/checking-holiday-entitlement/calculating-holiday-pay

 

follow up in writing if no reply after a week.

 

keep it friendly for now. You may need to go formal later.

 

if you are a union member, they can help.

 

 

[kirstyo]

I'm also on the staff bank and had a substantive post too until recently. This was something our health board did ages ago, it is basically to make you actually take holidays. They should be paying you the average of your last 12 weeks rate, thats what a lot of people got backdated pay for a few years back (sure it was the 'pay as if at work' campaign they called it) but you need to request annual leave and wont be allowed to work the days you have taken leave. This was a huge issue in my health board and I would be surprised if other boards didn't take the lesson mine learned the hard way on board because they ended up having to pay a fortune out to people for leave and sick pay that had been paid at basic rate.  Its the same calculation for sick/carers/parental/maternity leave too, its always based on an average of the last 12 weeks pay

[maddie210]

Hi thanks for the replies, spoke to HR who have told me to put all on an email, so for now tnus is how I will proceed 

[ericsbrother]

the holiday pay should be calculated on hours worked and pay per hour. It wont matter if it is days or nights. How they choose to pay it will be up to them or by agreement but they cant change the law to suit themselves as to how it is calculated as far as zero hours contracts go

[kirstyo]

Days and nights make a huge difference in this case because the pay per hour is much higher on nights, weekends and public holidays. It used to be that they always put annual leave through as Monday Tuesday Wednesday dayshift and that was doing people out of a lot of money compared to what they would get from their 'average' working week so there was a campaign to make them pay holiday fairly and lots of people got backdated money.

[ericsbrother]

the you get your union to bash them over this rather than taking on the world on your own.

This is probably a big equal pay issue