GLAA Launch Holiday Pay Awareness Campaign ‘It comes with the job’
05 March 2019
- GLAA want workers to know that they are entitled to holiday pay
- Non-compliance with holiday pay can have serious consequences
- £1.8 billion of holiday pay goes unclaimed each year
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) have launched a campaign to ensure that workers are aware of their holiday pay ‘comes with the job.’ The campaign will last a month across several forms of social media and on public transport.
Why is paying the correct amount of holiday pay so important?
In October 2018 the GLAA made the failure to pay the correct amount of holiday pay a critical offence. If a business is found guilty of a critical offence, they have their GLAA licence removed. For more information click here. Basic holiday pay rules and regulation
The Working Time Regulations 1998 sets out that workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks paid annual leave.
If a worker is part time or is on a zero hours contract, they are still entitled to holiday pay at a rate of 12.07% of their average pay over a 12-week reference period, including overtime and commission as demonstrated in Bear Scotland Ltd v Fulton (2014) and Lock v British Gas Trading Ltd (2014).
The Good Work Plan has recommended that the holiday pay reference period should be extended from 12 weeks to 52 and this will come into force on 6 April 2020.
Aspire Comment
If a worker is denied holiday pay that they are entitled to, the worker can bring a claim to the employment tribunal. The tribunal process can be costly and time consuming therefore it is important to ensure that you are calculating and paying holiday pay correctly.
In December 2018 Government also committed to introducing a state enforcement system for holiday pay. This will enable workers to make a complaint to the state similarly to how HMRC deal with NMW. However, it is now March 2019 and we are none the wiser as to when holiday pay will become state enforced or by which enforcement body.