Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

An Electrical Technician

A Property Company

Act

Complaint Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 27 of the Organisation of Working Time Act, 1997

CA-00025018-001

15/01/2019

The complainant complains that his public holiday entitlements are not being properly calculated.

The basis on which this calculation was done was re-negotiated some years ago and the complainant says that this results in a shortfall in his entitlement.

He claims that he works on, but does not get paid for public holidays.

In January 2018 the respondent met its employees on becoming aware that its method for calculating entitlement to leave may not have been compliant. Up until then, its employees were given eighteen ‘shift days’ and it was agreed to increase this to twenty to include public holidays.

This was backdated to the start of each employee’s employment with the company.

Thus, the complainant now has twenty-one ‘shift days’ per annum inclusive of public holidays. (The shortfall in earlier years was compensated by the allocation of and additional four and a half days to cover the period October 26^th 2015 to December 31^st 2017.)

This is the equivalent of two hundred and fifty two hours leave and therefore over compensates for any requirement to work on a public holiday.

The calculation of the complainant’s entitlement is complicated by the fact that he works twelve hour shifts; giving rise to the notion of the ‘shift days’ off. He therefore works only on fourteen days per month (admittedly for twelve hours per shift).

In fact, in 2018 he confirmed in his evidence that he had only worked on four public holidays and not all of these were for the full twelve hours (two were, the other two were for five and seven hours respectively.)

Therefore, his twenty-one (shift) days off, were they to be taken consecutively would have him on leave for a period of six weeks which puts his entitlement into context. As noted above his leave entitlement expressed in hours is two hundred and fifty-two, (equivalent to thirty-one and a half days of eight hour shifts).

Accordingly, taking into account his own evidence that, cumulatively, he actually worked only the equivalent of two full shifts on his public holidays in 2018, I can see no basis on which he has been denied payment for public holidays as he was the beneficiary of a paid day off on the other days and no breach of the Act arises.

His complaint therefore, while made in good faith, is without merit and it does not succeed.

For the reasons set out above I do not uphold complaint CA-00025018-001 and it is dismissed.

Calculation of annual leave