Holiday Pay

In a judgment handed down by the Employment Appeal Tribunal on 4^th November 2014 in the case of Bear Scotland v Fulton (and conjoined cases) the Working Time Directive requires holiday pay to be calculated so as to include overtime, including non-guaranteed overtime, as part of normal remuneration, and that it is possible for the Working Time Regulations 1998 to be construed accordingly. However, this only applies to the four weeks' annual leave derived from the Working Time Directive, not the additional 1.6 weeks provided by regulation 13A of the Working Time Regulations 1998.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal also found that it was not open to employees to claim that they had suffered a series of deductions (for the purposes of the unlawful deductions from wages provisions of the Employment Rights Act (1996) by linking each occasion on which a period of holiday was underpaid. Where a period of more than three months had elapsed between each deduction, this had the effect of breaking the series.

Published: November 2014

Contact us:

For further advice on your employment issues contact Gillian Reid on 01904 716050 or Gillian.Reid@warekay.co.uk.