Monday, September 06, 2010
An Employment tribunal has ruled that employers must pay staff their full holiday entitlements if they are off sick for more than a year and are unable to take their leave. James Rawlings, who was off sick for more than a year before leaving his company, successfully claimed that he should be paid his full holiday entitlement upon resignation because his absence from work had prevented him from taking his leave. The ruling, in the Rawlings v The Direct Garage Door Company case, has confirmed another judgement by the House of Lords last year in Stringer v HMRC. Despite the Working Time Regulations stating that it is unlawful for employees to carry over more than eight days (and only in circumstances where they were unable to take leave due to absence because of illness), the House of Lords had previously held that workers could not only accrue holiday pay while on sick leave but that the leave could be carried forward to the next leave year. A separate tribunal also ruled, in the case Shah v First West Yorkshire that an employee should be able to carry over pre-booked annual leave to the following year if they were too ill to take it. Do the same prinicples apply to someone who falls sick while on holiday? and there are other questions, such as what evidence of sickness can be requested or can the employee self-certify for up to a week? This area remains fraught with problems for employers.