Agency screwing me out of holiday pay
May 25 2007 13:59
Just checking over my first wage slip from the agency I'm working for. When I registered with them, they said I'd be paid a fixed amount per half-day session I worked, looking over my pay check, they're trying to include my holiday pay in that ammount. I'm pretty sure this isn't legal, but I'm not sure.
May 25 2007 14:13
#2
I've been told that it has been sucessfully challenged at a tribunal before, but taking anything to a tribunal when you're agency is just silly.
May 25 2007 14:17
#3
madashell wrote:
I've been told that it has been sucessfully challenged at a tribunal before
Really? Hmm that sounds strange, because it is legal... unless they don't actually let you take the "holiday" time of course. This would be illegal. But then of course if you take it you don't get paid.
The Standard or Metro was trying to make out the EU was taking away workers' freedom by trying to ban this by saying it would prevent workers earning more money if they chose to, what bollocks.
that said I'd like to see what temps' wages were immediately before and after this legislation came in to see if there was an actual 8-odd percent rise. Even if there was it will have been eroded since.
May 25 2007 14:49
#4
It's not legal, unless your contract states that its part of your terms - i.e. contract - of employment. Unless that explicitly states so, it's out of order. Keep us posted.
May 25 2007 15:36
#5
this ain't much but; it's worth checking if the agency are REC members - cos if so it sounds v much like they've breached their code of practice. small beer but....
May 25 2007 16:49
#6
my contract does this, its a bit shit because it means no paid holidays and my pay's still shit including the 'holiday pay.' it's also obviously bollocks, because my wage 'including holiday pay' is £7.50/hr, and when i do overtime that's paid at the same rate, not 12/13ths of £7.50, so it's quite obviously just the basic rate - that and they advertise the jobs at that rate too. fuckers.
May 26 2007 10:16
#7
In Europe, with the hierarchy of norms the european labour law is above all national laws. It is like that for most continental countries. So you could indeed go to european court. But....
And I wonder if the UK really is in the EU sometimes.
In the rest of Europe you cumulate your pay holidays by working: 1 months work equals 2 1/2 paid holidays.
May 26 2007 12:13
#8
heartskat wrote:
And I wonder if the UK really is in the EU sometimes.In the rest of Europe you cumulate your pay holidays by working: 1 months work equals 2 1/2 paid holidays.
well it's like that here for non-agency workers, but a lot of jobs are agency now (i work for a fortune 500 company, and they rarely use non-agency staff below management level). it's blair's 'flexible labour market' - coming soon to you if sarko's rhetoric about dynamic job creation is to believed 
May 26 2007 12:33
#9
According to the Worksmart website:
Quote:
Do agency workers get paid holiday?You should receive four weeks’ paid annual leave.
In the past, some agencies have been getting round this by saying that your hourly pay rate includes holiday pay and that they therefore do not have to give extra pay if you take a break. However as a result of a decision by the European Court of Justice, this practice is now unlawful, and agency workers have a right to receive payment on days they take as holiday.
As an agency worker, your hours and pay may vary considerably over time. If this is the case, your earnings over the most recent 12 week period are divided by the hours worked over the same 12 weeks to give you an average hourly rate and this is used to determine your holiday pay. If you did not do any work at all in one or more weeks, you simply discount that week and move to the week immediately before it until you have a total of 12 weeks work and pay on which to work out your average hourly rate.
More info on agency workers' rights can be found here: www.worksmart.org.uk/rights/agency_workers
May 28 2007 15:17
#10
So this is very interesting to me. Are you saying that there is statutory provision for paid time off in the UK? Is there a relation to working overtime?
May 28 2007 15:22
#11
madashell wrote:
Just checking over my first wage slip from the agency I'm working for. When I registered with them, they said I'd be paid a fixed amount per half-day session I worked, looking over my pay check, they're trying to include my holiday pay in that ammount. I'm pretty sure this isn't legal, but I'm not sure.
its shit, but most jobs do that, my agency does, shame there aint a co-ordinated campaign against it, since it goes against the whole principle of holiday pay and that
May 28 2007 15:24
#12
pghwob wrote:
Are you saying that there is statutory provision for paid time off in the UK?
20 days per year in full time employment. There was a loophole that allows employers to count bank (public) holidays in this time, but it's either been closed or will be soon.
It's not much, but a lot better than nothing!
May 28 2007 15:28
#13
cantdocartwheels wrote:
its shit, but most jobs do that, my agency does, shame there aint a co-ordinated campaign against it, since it goes against the whole principle of holiday pay and that
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say "most" jobs do it - it's only the worst employers, really.
Are you getting anything extra for today being a bank holiday, btw?
May 28 2007 15:38
#14
There is no statutory paid time off in the US, at least not for private sector employees. Nor is there any mandated federal break time (time off to rest after a certain number of hours worked in a day). .
May 28 2007 16:10
#15
You do get quite a lot more public holidays than us though. Not four weeks, but noticeably more.
May 28 2007 16:53
#16
Though I think the US has more public holidays than we do, I heard that there was no automatic entitlement to take them as paid leave.
I think the uK has the lowest number of bank holidays of almost anywhere in the world, a paltry 8. Damn Victorians 
Regards,
Martin
May 28 2007 17:00
#17
It'd be ace if we got one for Ede, just to see Class War Federation shitting their pants about whether they should support it or not. 
May 29 2007 00:22
#18
Yes, I had to work through most "holidays" the last few years. No entitlement to take time off, though practice at a good amount of places is to pay time-and-a-half for holidays worked. I'd still rather have a union than the bosses whims...
May 29 2007 07:36
#19
Jack wrote:
It'd be ace if we got one for Ede
Eid 
May 29 2007 11:51
#20
Jack wrote:
pghwob wrote:
Are you saying that there is statutory provision for paid time off in the UK?20 days per year in full time employment. There was a loophole that allows employers to count bank (public) holidays in this time, but it's either been closed or will be soon.
I'm waiting for this one!
May 29 2007 12:01
#21
Actually, I keep hearing it's "going to be closed soon", but a brief google hasn't found anything that implies this is underway. 
Altho apparently the statutory minimum leave is probably going to be raised on 1 October.
May 30 2007 03:21
#22
catch wrote:
Jack wrote:
It'd be ace if we got one for EdeEid
Yeah i didn't wanna correct that one, catch - thought i would leave it to you. Didn't wanna embarrass the poster - tho as it was Jack...
May 30 2007 05:55
#23
Jack wrote:
cantdocartwheels wrote:
its shit, but most jobs do that, my agency does, shame there aint a co-ordinated campaign against it, since it goes against the whole principle of holiday pay and thatI think it's a bit of a stretch to say "most" jobs do it - it's only the worst employers, really.
Are you getting anything extra for today being a bank holiday, btw?
i don't know, i think you'll find most agencies do it, i've worked for loads over the last 10 years or so and every one of them did it (or at least since the laws were changed) which means most temp/contract workers will be in this situation, so i'd say most workers in these types of jobs have this
don't see what changing it would do though tbg, you'd just get a proportionate decrease in your cash in hand when you are working, at my current job they refused to pay me the holiday element of it in the hourly wage and said it would be retained until i took a holiday, but if i didn't take the holiday within a certain time i would lose it altogether, that's even worse than getting it paid up front, at least it's in your pocket rather than theirs
more focus should be put on pushing to enforce other rights such as sick pay and stuff if you've been working for the same place for over 12 months or so, your meant to be considered a permanenet worker in situations like that
May 30 2007 06:14
#24
John. wrote:
that said I'd like to see what temps' wages were immediately before and after this legislation came in to see if there was an actual 8-odd percent rise. Even if there was it will have been eroded since.
i never saw anything like that, although you can be sure if any numpty starts a campaign to change the law, we'd see an immediate 8% reduction if it was successful
saying that wasn't this introduced at roughly the same time as the minimum wage came in, so some uplifts may have been falsely attributed to holiday pay, but actually were just due to minimum wage regulations, may be wrong in the timings of these two things though, although i'm sure i never got a 8% rise and i was contracting before and after the change
May 30 2007 07:16
#25
actually i remember now, at the time when it was introduced and people asked the agencies for more money for it, the agencies maintained however that what they payed had always included an element for holiday pay (which is an odd assertion as temping had always been pushed by the agencies as a cost effective way for employers as they only paid for work when work was done), so to comply with the regulations they only had to specifically allocate a component of the pay rate to holiday pay on the wage slip, or something along those lines
May 30 2007 09:13
#26
erm, oisleep, were you contracting or temping; the first you supply your services as a limited company ("oisleep lrd" so to speak) the second as an agency PAYE employee? the difference is crucial IIRC
May 30 2007 16:16
#27
oisleep wrote:
John. wrote:
that said I'd like to see what temps' wages were immediately before and after this legislation came in to see if there was an actual 8-odd percent rise. Even if there was it will have been eroded since.i never saw anything like that, although you can be sure if any numpty starts a campaign to change the law, we'd see an immediate 8% reduction if it was successful
Right that's interesting about when they brought it in.
I will take issue with saying only a "numpty" would want the law changed, changing it would obviously be a good thing. And I very much doubt you'd see an 8% reduction in wages across the board because it'd piss people off too much. There are a lot of agencies competing with one another, if someone was in a job where their wage was cut lots would desert to other agencies and better jobs.
Sure for some people there would probably be a bit of a cut, but overall it'd end up being a big gain for everyone. 4 weeks time off is a lot; when i was temping I realised I'd sometimes gone over a year with hardly a day off.
May 30 2007 16:42
#28
actually i don't think it would result ina long-term gain. there is so much casualised labour available that - in the asbsence of mass casualised-labour organisation or some such, the laws of supply & demand would work the other way.
"no we ain't gonna take that shit"
agency type "OK..."
<shrugs>
<moves onto next name in file>
The pressure on them from clients (i.e. employers) to drive costs/their margins down will outweigh and outpunch presssure from isolated groups of workers.
Like I say, onlly mass-labour organisation could beat that
May 30 2007 22:29
#29
streathamite wrote:
erm, oisleep, were you contracting or temping; the first you supply your services as a limited company ("oisleep lrd" so to speak) the second as an agency PAYE employee? the difference is crucial IIRC
welll, you can contract or temp either through a limited company or through PAYE, the two terms are interchangeable really
i've always been PAYE like, but i was always under the impression that the only difference to gross pay if you do it through a limited company is that you get paid a bit more due to the national insurance savings that the employer doesn't have to pay compared to if you were PAYE, with NI at roughly 10% that in theory should get passed on, however if they then say that you are not entitled to holiiday pay if you contract our your services as a limited company they would probably knock the 8% off, so should end up pretty much the same (at the gross pay level)
May 30 2007 22:44
#30
John. wrote:
oisleep wrote:
John. wrote:
that said I'd like to see what temps' wages were immediately before and after this legislation came in to see if there was an actual 8-odd percent rise. Even if there was it will have been eroded since.i never saw anything like that, although you can be sure if any numpty starts a campaign to change the law, we'd see an immediate 8% reduction if it was successful
Right that's interesting about when they brought it in.
I will take issue with saying only a "numpty" would want the law changed, changing it would obviously be a good thing. And I very much doubt you'd see an 8% reduction in wages across the board because it'd piss people off too much. There are a lot of agencies competing with one another, if someone was in a job where their wage was cut lots would desert to other agencies and better jobs.
Sure for some people there would probably be a bit of a cut, but overall it'd end up being a big gain for everyone. 4 weeks time off is a lot; when i was temping I realised I'd sometimes gone over a year with hardly a day off.
come on, don't be so naieve on som many levels
at worst you'd see an 8% reduction, at best you'd just see an official allocation on the wage slip from normal pay to holiday pay, with the gross amount paid being the same, or even worse the holiday element held back by the agency instead of being paid immediately in the week the worker earned it, ask anyone what they would prefer £x now in your pocket, or £x at some undisclosed time in the future potentially after a battle with the agency to get it if you didn't take the holiday in the right period
so the some amount of any effort going into any campaign for this would be to reduce the existing take home pay of workers with a potential compensating pay when they have a holiday, that's a numpty's campaign in my book
you have to realise that agencies maintain 4 weeks pay is already included in the rate they pay people
the other factor which makes it numptyish, is that if it was changed and the holiday pay held back until you take it, because you're not actually entitled to holiday pay until you've worked for something like 13 weeks, a huge chunk of people who work on short term contracts would end up with a reduced rate with the agency holding the holiday pay back but then never having to pay it out if they leave before 13 weeks
and also your assertion that capital won't do something in case it pisses people off is pretty funny, what organisation is there amongst agency workers to mount any effective campaign against it? the competition that you referred to above works much more in the favour of the employers than the workers, and tbh i think you're living in cloud cukoo land if you think competition between agencies results in a better deal for the workers, most companies have a preferred supllier list of 2 or 3 agencies anyway, so there's very little competition that can occur in such situations
finally regardless of any competition between agencies, it's the employer who pays the agency that sets the wage they will pay, if some agencies try to be more ethical than others and try and lump extra holiday pay on that other agencies don't, then they won't get on the preferred supplier list
there's a million and one things that are worthy of campaigning for, this imo is not one of them
I think most agencies just designate 8.33% of your pay is "holiday pay."
I know mine did.
The EU is trying to ban it in the UK, cos it's not legal in most of Europe.