holiday pay

[feebee102]

Can anyone advise my son on his rights.He was offered an apprentiship just as he left school.He worked for the company for 11weeks and had given up his college place for doing his NVQ on the advise that he was going to be kept on.Three weeks later he was told that there was going to have to be two redundancys and seeing he was the last one in ,he would be the first one out.
He went to a meeting on the Friday and was told he WAS being made redundant .Normally a weeks notice has to be worked, but they insisted that the working atmosphere would not be good so told him to take the next week off as holiday.
He has just received his final paycheque but he has only been paid for his final weeks work that he did.Should he be entitled to a weeks holiday pay as they insisted that he took the next week off as holiday.

Also the director( a family friend) who got my son the job resigned two weeks before my son was made redundant, his son who worked for the company also resigned , and if this is not a coincidence the directors sons girlfriend just happened to be the other person who was made redundant.Is it me or does this sound a bit fishy, and could my son claim for unfair dismissal.
Cheers
feebee

[Buenchico]

(2-part post):

Let's deal with the easy bit first:
I can't see any way in which your son could claim for unfair dismissal in these circumstance but, if you want to check, see here:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/Employment/Employees/ RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/fs/en

Things now get a bit tricky when it comes to working out the numbers. If I've read your post correctly, your son was with the company for 11+3+1 weeks (=15 weeks) including the disputed holiday period. I'll assume that he worked a 5 day week and that he didn't have a contract giving him more than the statutory minimum holiday allowance. That means that, in a full year, he would be entitled to 20 days paid holiday. So, pro rata, he was actually entitled to 5.77 days paid holiday.

I'll now further assume that this happened fairly recently. If so, there was only one bank holiday during the employment period. My next assumption is that the firm closed on this day but this is the only day of holiday taken by your son (apart from that final week) during his employment. So, in total your son took 6 day's holiday when his actual entitlement was 5.77 days.

[Buenchico]

According to those figures, the firm should have paid your son for that final week but (because of the 'excess' holiday) they would have been entitled to deduct 0.23 days pay from his payment for that week. However, if your son had already taken some time off on holiday (whether by choice or because the firm closed on certain dates), then the deductions for excess holiday increase and will reduce the amount due for the final week. If, for example, your son had already taken a week off (plus the bank holiday plus the final week of holiday) he would have had 11 days of holiday instead of his allowance of 5.77 days. This means that he would have to refund the company for 5.23 days from the pay for that final week of holiday. (i.e. instead of the company owing him money, he would, at least theoretically, owe them 0.23 days pay).

So, in principle, I agree that the firm should have paid your son for the final week but the actual payment (if any) can only be worked out by having regard to how much holiday (including bank holidays and other 'compulsory' holidays) your son had during his employment.

Chris

[feebee102]

Cheers Chris
Will get on the phone to them tommorrow.
Looked on the web site, and it is called Garden Leave.
Cheers Fiona

[buildersmate]

Whilst I don't doubt Chris' calculation, I'm not sure that the company were entitled to force him to take that final week as holiday. They had to give him notice - if they chose not to ask him to actually work in that work, I reckon they should have paid him holiday pay due as well. This is exactly what gardening leave is.