Employee in their first 12 months working for their employer taking annual holidays in advance
Kenny started working for his employer Tania on 15 September. Two months later, at the beginning of November, Tania gave notice to all her employees that the workplace was going to have its regular annual close down from 24 December until 5 January.
Tania must pay Kenny 8% of his gross earnings in relation to the closedown period (from 15 September until 23 December). This amount is similar to one week’s pay for Kenny. Kenny is worried about how he will cope financially for the rest of the closedown as he was out of work for a while before he got the job working for Tania. Kenny asks Tania if he can have one week’s annual holidays in advance to tide him over. Tania says this is ok but reminds Kenny that this will mean next year he will only have three weeks annual holidays. Tania also reminds Kenny that she must move his anniversary date for the calculation of annual holidays.
This means Kenny won’t have any annual holidays entitlement available until the following December and if he takes a week annual holidays in advance now he will only have 3 weeks left. Kenny is fine with this and Kenny and Tania agree to the week’s annual holidays in advance in writing. Kenny’s anniversary date for annual holidays would normally be moved to 24 December (the start of the actual closedown period) except Tania has chosen to move the date to the nearby date of 17 December so that every year her employees will be entitled to annual holidays at the start of the closedown period. This means Kenny will be entitled to four weeks’ annual holidays (less the week taken in advance) from 17 December next year.
Employer won’t agree to a request to take two weeks’ annual holidays in advance
Mayce has been working for Erin for two years. The workplace has an annual closedown of four weeks, for most of January each year. Mayce gets four weeks’ annual holidays each year but she has already taken two of these weeks in advance on an overseas trip so she will only have two weeks’ of annual holidays entitlement at the time of the closedown. Like all the other employees in the workplace, her anniversary date for annual holidays has been set at 22 December. Mayce asks Erin if she can take two weeks’ annual holidays in advance at the time of the closedown this year so that she will have enough annual holidays to cover the entire closedown.
Erin considers Mayce’s request, and tells her she can only take one week of annual holidays in advance, because if she took two weeks in advance this year, then next year Mayce would only have two weeks annual holidays to cover the next closedown. By only agreeing to one week ‘s annual holidays in advance this year, Mayce gets three weeks’ total annual holidays (two weeks entitlement and one week taken in advance) this year and will only have to take one week’s unpaid leave to cover the closedown. Mayce will still have three weeks’ annual holidays left for next year’s closedown.