Stolen Holidays

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 06 January 2021 14:38
Published: Thursday, 23 August 2018 15:44
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Wendy's (and others) deny staff public holidays

Another example of what appears to be a complete disregard of the Holidays Act. Requiring employees to work on the same day of the week for multiple weeks in order to qualify as a working day and receive an Alternative public holiday is just wrong and now confirmed illegal! Even worse when the roster is deliberately designed to prevent it. If you are rostered to work on a specific day then it must be a working day!

How is a small business to compete against the big guys when they don't abide by the rules, claiming they are unclear. What rot! At any time they could have sort a legal interpretation, or even just read the act for themselves. They don't even need to buy a copy, its free to view at http://www.legislation.govt.nz The facts for Wendy's are:- That even after giving in to a number of persistent individual employees and granting them an Alternate Day, they obviously knew their processes were wrong, but didn't want to acknowledge the truth because it would cost money. Well now they have been shown up and are even having the cheek to appeal.

Its quite simple, if you don't open on a public holiday you don't need to provide an Alternative Day. But hey, if they did that all employees who otherwise would have worked that day would get a paid day off costing them money. But whats the difference? Every employee is entitled to 11 public holidays each year. It makes no difference to cost of employment when its taken. Sure they need to pay employees more to work on a public holiday, but that has nothing to do with providing employees with their legal public holidays or replacements. The additional cost of working on the day can be covered by a surcharge. OK some employees will be rostered off and not get paid, but that's the same for everyone else when a public holiday falls on a weekend. A shift worker's days off, or equivalent weekend, just happen to fall outside of Saturday and Sunday. They still get to enjoy the holiday however, which is the whole point. When an employee DOES NOT work on a public holiday only then is it classed as not otherwise a working day.

Clause 12(4) of the Act seems pretty clear:-
For the purposes of public holidays, if an employee would otherwise work any amount of time on a public holiday, that day must be treated as a day that would otherwise be a working day for the employee.
Meaning: If an employee is required to work on any part of a Public holiday its a normal working day and he/she must be credited an Alternative Day to enable the holiday to be taken at some later time when convenient to the employee.

There is only one exception documented in the act, and that is for an employee who specifically only works on the public holidays.