WTD - Query??

ASK THE EXPERTS SAFETY, LAW AND WORKING TIME DIRECTIVE FORUM (INTE
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At my work we have just been given details of the employers’ directions as to the WTD and in particular holidays. After 1 year’s employment we get an extra 5 days holiday making 25 in total. Now to quote from the memo that we received:-
“The law will not allow us to do anything with the 20 days statutory days and these must be taken within the holiday year, but the advantages of paid rest days is that they can be carried over into the next year, or paid to drivers rather than be taken. While we hope to not have to use this facility, it could be useful to have the opportunity if needed. To allow us to do this, we are issuing a slight change to our employment contracts that say you get 20 statutory days, plus 8 paid rest days. The 20 statutory days are made of 12 leave days and 8 bank holidays. we are including the bank holidays in the 20 you have to take, as these are fixed to particular dates in the year. You will still have the same amount of holidays and still be paid the same and book them the same way as before, but we may, by agreement, be able to use the paid rest days to help reduce your average to below 48 hours limit, or else be able to pay you at Christmas for the days you haven’t used.”

Now, I can’t really get my head around this at the moment (currently on my 3rd Stella :smiley: :smiley: ) but wondered in the learned minds of Trucknet could provide some explanation as to whether this is a good thing or not? :confused:

Ta.

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The law will not allow us to do anything with the 20 days statutory days and these must be taken within the holiday year, but the advantages of paid rest days is that they can be carried over into the next year, or paid to drivers rather than be taken. While we hope to not have to use this facility, it could be useful to have the opportunity if needed. To allow us to do this, we are issuing a slight change to our employment contracts that say you get 20 statutory days, plus 8 paid rest days. The 20 statutory days are made of 12 leave days and 8 bank holidays. we are including the bank holidays in the 20 you have to take, as these are fixed to particular dates in the year. You will still have the same amount of holidays and still be paid the same and book them the same way as before, but we may, by agreement, be able to use the paid rest days to help reduce your average to below 48 hours limit, or else be able to pay you at Christmas for the days you haven’t used."

Its all in the small print!
Have another couple of Stellas :stuck_out_tongue:

Looks like some clever lawyer chap has been earning vast amounts of wedge again.

I dont understand it either. It looks like they have given you something, which normally means they have taken something away :smiley:

Dont forget a days holiday counts as 8 hours work in the WTD :question:

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Wheel Nut:
Looks like some clever lawyer chap has been earning vast amounts of wedge again.

I’d be asking for a refund. :stuck_out_tongue:

Whilst Employment legislation entitles all employees to 20 day paid holiday each year, and yes, this may inlcude Bank Holidays, there is, AFAIK, no requirement to take them. I.e. Nothing to prevent anyone working them for extra money (although Health & Safety considerations might apply), nor is there anything to prevent some, or all, of those days being carried over to a later year.

Twenty five days after 1 year seems generous.

As stated, Holidays (& sickness) are counted as 8 hours per day or 48 hours per week.

So the individual Bank Holidays, counted separately, add up to 8 x 8 = 64 hours over the year.

However, a one week holiday of 9 days. 2 Weekly Rest + 5 Holiday + 2 Weekly Rest = 48 hours.

Frankly, I’m having trouble understanding what they mean.

To allow us to do this, we are issuing a slight change to our employment contracts that say you get 20 statutory days, plus 8 paid rest days.

Is this the wording of the existing agreement and the bit they want to change?

And this is the change they want to make?

The 20 statutory days are made of 12 leave days and 8 bank holidays.

Which makes you 8 days worse off. :unamused:

See other thread where I have put a link to information on Grievance Procedure.

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To follow on from Krankee…I would be after a refund from that lawyer too! :confused:

Without getting into whether you are left better or worse off, the change will make no difference to how you stand legally.

The Regs state basically that the first 20 paid days off you have must be included as Working Time at 8hrs/day or 48hrs/week - can you already see the discrepency here? It’s all based on 6 x 8hr days! :unamused: Anything after that, paid or not, can be used to get your hours down.

Therefore, from where I’m sitting, it is completely irrelevant what label they choose to put on your days off - they could call them “Pink Elephant Hunting Days” if they liked - the first 20 count as Working Time. :confused:

Incidentally, sick days count as Working Time in the same way…as does Maternity Leave. I’ll be doing 48hrs a week for 4 months between May and September without so much as showing my face in the yard…although thinking about it, maybe I should be booking a few more, what with night feeds and all that!!! Then again, is waiting for bottles to be tipped by the nipper “Other Work” or a “POA”…? :bulb:

Daft, isn’t it? Until you stop and remember what the whole point of the regs is, that is - it’s Social Legislation to stop workers being forced to work excessive hours. Something the industry in general seems to have forgotten… :cry: :cry: :cry:

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Wheel Nut:
Dont forget a days holiday counts as 8 hours work in the WTD :question:
[/quote]

To try and clarify something for my own benefit as much as anybody elses. I understand that your statutory 4 weeks leave per anum, which would equate to 20 days if your on a basic 5day week, is to be time nuetral, thus 4 weeks x 48 hours =192 hours, divide this by 20 days to give a time nuetral day of 9.6 hours. So would this not mean that your stat days should be at 9.6 hours and not 8 hours as is the general norm, and count as 9.6 hours towards your WTD average hours total.
DISCUSS :wink:

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As stated above, it’s because the whole thing is based on 6 x 8hr shifts. Therefore one day = 8hrs, but 1 week = 48 hrs. :wink:

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Lucy:
Daft, isn’t it? Until you stop and remember what the whole point of the regs is, that is - it’s Social Legislation to stop workers being forced to work excessive hours. Something the industry in general seems to have forgotten… :cry: :cry: :cry:

So thats what its about :stuck_out_tongue:

If I can get 52 weeks paid holiday, I shall just about manage to stay within the rules than? :smiley:

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Lucy:
As stated above, it’s because the whole thing is based on 6 x 8hr shifts. Therefore one day = 8hrs, but 1 week = 48 hrs. :wink:

But as i understood it {and i’m rather slow} the statutory holiday entitlement is meant to be based on 4 weeks at what ever your fixed pay week is, therefore most people do a 5 day week with the 6th day being over time and optional, and on this basis the statutory holiday is 20 days. This then brings my earlier calculations to effect as regards the stat’ holiday days being time nuetral. I may well be wrong, but if i’m not then those people who’s bosses start trying to reconfigure holiday entitlement ought to be owed more money for their time off, and when your doing calculations as to average WT’hours over your defined period, must take this extra time into their equations, because you can be sure the ministry will. But like i siad i may be barking!!! up the wrong tree.

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Krankee:
Whilst Employment legislation entitles all employees to 20 day paid holiday each year, and yes, this may inlcude Bank Holidays, there is, AFAIK, no requirement to take them. I.e. Nothing to prevent anyone working them for extra money (although Health & Safety considerations might apply), nor is there anything to prevent some, or all, of those days being carried over to a later year.

Maybe not in law Krankee but companies can set their own policy which bars any carry over of leave or only in exeptional circumstances. An example might be for someone who has been on long term sick, maternity leave, or the like. My own company does not allow carry over and if you don’t use it you lose it with no payment in lieu.

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eddie snax:
But as i understood it {and i’m rather slow} the statutory holiday entitlement is meant to be based on 4 weeks at what ever your fixed pay week is, therefore most people do a 5 day week with the 6th day being over time and optional, and on this basis the statutory holiday is 20 days.

No. The Statutory Holiday Entitlement for a full-time worker is 20 days. That amount is actually stated in the original Working Time Regs which came in in 1998, and has applied to Road Transport since the Horizontal Amending Directive came in in August 2003. :wink:

Always try and…

…remember what the whole point of the regs is, that is - it’s Social Legislation to stop workers being forced to work excessive hours. Something the industry in general seems to have forgotten… :cry: :cry: :cry:

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But what i’m having trouble getting my head round is, earlier you stated the week is based on 6days at 8hours per day =48 hours a week, but as most people have a basic 5 day week, and 20 days breaks down easly into 4 weeks, i would have felt that a basic day of 9.6 hours would seem more apropriate, this giving you the net 48 hours that is required to make your holiday time nuetral. Like i said i’m just trying to get it squaired a way in my own mind, and may be others may have had the same take on it as me. This forum is as allways a very usefull conduit, to be able to thrash out these ideas with others, some of who seem to have actualy read and understood the regs, :smiley:

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I’ll try and answer the 5 day/6 day calculation to the best of my knowledge, so bear with me. The wtd regs do not actually say how many days you can work it says what rest you must have, in a similar way to the tacho regs.

The WTD regs say that you must have at least 24hours of rest in any week so that gives a maximum number of days at work is 6. You then need to add in the minimum daily rest periods, and breaks, to give you a maximum number of hours available to use for working within that week, the WTD does not give a maximum for non-mobile workers, and over any given reference period the weekly average must be no more than 48.

Because the leave is an entitlement given under the WTD regulations this cannot be used to distort the calculations for the unscrupulous who may argue that because the standard week may be 40 hours, and the employee is not available to work, anything above that figure should be used to increase the total number of hours available to work in the reference period. It has to be cost neutral for the reference period calculation of averages.

Consider if you will an unscrupulous employer may choose to make the standard week 20 hours, and pay all time at the same flat rate. If the cost neutral emphasis was not in place an employer could make you work a whole lot more than the 48 average simply by saying that for every week of holiday you will have to work an extra 28 hours during the remainder of the reference period. This is something that happens if you are fortunate to enjoy more than the 20 days granted by the WTD you extra leave but your employer can quite legally ask you to work a corresponding number of hours in the remainder of the reference period and still be below the 48 hours average. This may not be a problem if you are paid hourly, or for these additional hours, but if salaried you do not actually get the extra time away from work and may give the hours back for free.

To further muddy the water the WTD regs mean that you cannot be forced to work more than 48 hours per week averaged out over the reference period but non-mobile workers still have the right to opt out, something that the RTD denies to mobile workers. I have heard of some, not many it has to be said, employers who have actually increased the number of hours for their staff from 40 and 42 hours up to 48 simply because they can require people to work upto that limit.

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What i’m trying to nail down is the value in hours of 1 days holiday.the reason i keep banging on about 9.6 hours for 1 day , is that equates to 1/20th off 192 hours, this is the amount of hours that 20 days holiday equals in my case, if one week must be time nuetral thus 48 hours, and for 1 weeks holiday i’m requiered to take 5 days from my annual leave quota. So the conclusion that i’ve come to is that you have to take your indavisual employment situation, and if your on 4 on 4off or a 6 day week then your single day off will have a diferent hourly value. Or maybe carrot cruncher is incredibly slow :confused:

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Eddie…bottom line is that the regulations state that one day’s holiday is worth 8 hours, but a week’s is worth 48. :confused:

It’s not supposed to make sense or be logical. It’s a European law. :unamused: :wink:

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Lucy:
Eddie…bottom line is that the regulations state that one day’s holiday is worth 8 hours, but a week’s is worth 48. :confused:

It’s not supposed to make sense or be logical. It’s a European law. :unamused: :wink:

Dratt that euro law, i thoiught i had a good scheme to get more for less. Back to the drawing board, cheers Luc’ :smiley: