In Greenfield v The Care Bureau Limited (C-219/14), the European Court of Justice ruled that in the case of part time employees who increase their working hours during a holiday year, an employer must recalculate their accrued holiday entitlement for the period that covers the increased working hours, but not for any prior period under the old working hours arrangement.
The case concerned an employee's accrued holiday entitlement during the employer's holiday year which ran from 15 June of each year. In the early part of her June 2012/13 holiday year, the employee only worked one day a week, thereby accruing only 4 statutory working holiday days for the holiday year (excluding any public holidays). In July 2012 she took a one week holiday which exhausted (and exceeded) her entitlement for the year. However, from August 2012 her hours increased significantly as she began working full time: 12 full days on and two days off. She requested a further week off in November 2012, but this was refused by the employer on the basis that she had exhausted her full holiday entitlement in July 2012.
The employee brought a claim on the basis that her accrued holiday entitlement should have been recalculated for the holiday year in line with her increased hours of work.
The ECJ ruled that where there has been an increase in working hours, an employer must re-calculate an employee's accrued leave entitlement from the date of the change (the date on which the hours actually increased) through to the end of the holiday year. There is no requirement to take into account or recalculate accrued entitlement for the earlier part time working period as that related to a previous arrangement.
This decision is not surprising as employers are used to calculating changes in accrued holiday entitlement when employees move from full time working to part time working. The decision is in effect confirming that a similar approach should be taken when the reverse situation occurs. It is also a reminder to employers that they should have in place a proper system of re-calculating accrued holiday entitlement when there is a change of hours, not only to ensure that they are allowing for the correct amount of annual leave, but also to ensure that they are not granting more holiday than the employee may be entitled to. It is a frequent occurrence for part time workers to increase their hours by a few hours a day to one or two days a week, and quite often the impact on the increased accrued holiday entitlement is overlooked by employers.
A worked example of this is an employee who works 2.5 days per week for the first half of the holiday year, which is then increased to full time work for the second half of it. If the full time entitlement is 20 statutory holidays over a year, his entitlement for the first six months is half of the full time accrued amount over that period i.e. half of 10 days = 5 days holiday; and for the second half of the holiday year he is entitled to accrue the full statutory entitlement of 10 days due to his full time working. His total entitlement for the year works out to 15 days (5 days + 10 days).
In this particular case, the employee still took holiday in excess of her entitlement for the part time period so it may be possible for the employer to claw back the excess, or more obviously set it off against the new holiday leave entitlement – though this point was not dealt with by the ECJ.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
