Employment Update – September 2018

Holidays Act: an update on the review

As announced earlier this year, the Government has established a taskforce to conduct a review of the Holidays Act 2003. The taskforce has now released an issues paper for public consultation to identify the issues that the taskforce will attempt to resolve as part of its review.

Some of the key issues identified in the paper include:

• clarification regarding payments to be included in an employee's "gross earnings" and "ordinary weekly pay" for annual leave payments;
• confusion and difficulties relating to the calculation of ordinary weekly pay and average weekly earnings, including when it is "not possible" to use the formula for ordinary weekly pay;
• clarification regarding the definition of an "ordinary working week" and an "otherwise working day";
• difficulties in relation to "intermittent or irregular" employment and the "pay as you go" approach to satisfying an employee's annual holidays entitlement; and
• various complexities which create complications for payroll systems and lead to non-compliance with the Act.

For further detail on these issues and others identified by the taskforce, the full issues paper is available here. The taskforce is now accepting submissions from the public in order to identify any other issues which have not been raised in this paper. Submissions are open until 12 October 2018.

Submissions

Russell McVeagh is preparing a submission to the taskforce detailing some of the issues we experience in advising on the Holidays Act. Please feel free to get in touch with a member of the team if you would like to feed anything in to our submission.

This article is intended only to provide a summary of the subject covered. It does not purport to be comprehensive or to provide legal advice. No person should act in reliance on any statement contained in this publication without first obtaining specific professional advice. If you require any advice or further information on the subject matter of this newsletter, please contact the partner/solicitor in the firm who normally advises you, or alternatively contact one of the partners listed below.