I’m just wondering if anyone can confirm the legality of something I’ve noticed my employer doing, despite it seeming shady.
Obviously, because of Corona, I’ve been able to accrue a fair number of holiday days over the past 2-3 years as the previous year’s remaining days have been carried over.
Last year I took 5 days off to recover from some minor surgery, but having gone back through payslips, I’ve noticed that my employer deducted days from my current contract’s allocation of holiday, rather than credit them against the 5 days I had carried over from the previous year. I was later paid out for those 5 days (I’m aware that an employer is not legally obliged to “buy out” unused holiday).
Nevertheless, the fact is that it seems odd / fishy that they’re not prioritising the use of those carried over days, and are instead deducting them from my current lot.
Is this kind of practice legal (if strange), or not? I can imagine it probably is somehow, but I’d like some clarification if anyone can provide it.
Thanks.
Edit – To clarify, the 5 days I took off last year (late 2021) should, in theory, have used the 5 days I’d carried over from 2020. I’m still in my 2021 contract, which they took the 5 days from (contract rolls around every October). So, yeah. Days are only carried over for one year, and I’m paid out at the end of the that 2nd year of availability if unused, but if my employer is using current contract days, that makes those 5 unavailable even though on paper they are available.
2 comments
>Obviously, because of Corona, I’ve been able to accrue a fair number of holiday days over the past 2-3 years as the previous year’s remaining days have been carried over.
I would’t be so sure about that. What does your companies rules say about carry over of PTO? I, for instance, can only carry over 10 days from the previous year.
>Last year I took 5 days off to recover from some minor surgery, but having gone back through payslips, I’ve noticed that my employer deducted days from my current contract’s allocation of holiday, rather than credit them against the 5 days I had carried over from the previous year. I was later paid out for those 5 days (I’m aware that an employer is not legally obliged to “buy out” unused holiday).
Are you sure that they carried over? I can only carry over for 1 year – if I go to 2 years the carry over days are deducted.
>Nevertheless, the fact is that it seems odd / fishy that they’re not prioritising the use of those carried over days, and are instead deducting them from my current lot.
Again, I would look at your company rule book. It is extremely unusual for carried over PTO to carry over for more than 1 year – so you likely lost some days – and entirely possible you had to many carry over days. I would also check when your days reset – in my case mine reset in October (there’s a reason for that I won’t go into).
>Is this kind of practice legal (if strange), or not? I can imagine it probably is somehow, but I’d like some clarification if anyone can provide it.
Again it depends on what is in the company rule book. The number of days they are required to give you is set in law. The number of those days they can assign and how they’re assigned (ie it has to be a set company policy it can’t just be an arbitrary you’re taking next week off OP) are set in law. How they pay out, how and if they roll over, and all the other fun stuff is normally set in your company handbook/rules. For instance when the rest of the company was having forced vacations we here in Japan were nicely asked to take a vacation if we felt like it but it was entirely up to us (I did not).
It’s important to find out this stuff when you start, while the Japanese tend to forget it I view my vacation/PTO as part of my compensation package. I’m certainly willing to give it up for extra pay but I’m not willing to subsidize the companies operations by losing it.
You can carry personal days over for one year.
Example – your days that were granted in FY 2020 can be carried into FY 2021, and any remaining are lost when FY 2022 rolls around.
PTO is to be taken from the “oldest” days first.
You sure those days weren’t from two years ago? Check your company’s rollover dates – my current employer’s are in April, previous employer’s was January 1st.