Annual leave and holiday pay and other features in 2022 under the intervention legislation
Holiday pay and annual leave are regulated in the Employment Relationships Act (“ZDR-1”) as one of the rights (and duties) of both employee and employer under the employment relationship. The right to annual leave is acquired at the time of the conclusion of the employment relationship, and the right to holiday pay is inextricably linked to the right to annual leave.
The ZDR-1 requires that annual leave must not be less than four weeks’ duration in a calendar year (regardless of whether the employee is employed full-time or part-time), with the minimum number of days of annual leave depending on the individual worker’s working arrangements. It should be noted that the ZDR-1 already provides for an additional day of annual leave for an employee who has a child under the age of 15 (for each such child of the employee) and for a minimum of three additional days of annual leave for an older employee, an employee with a disability, etc. However, the collective agreements in force may lay down additional criteria for additional days of leave. Annual leave may be taken in several parts, one part of which must be at least two weeks long. Annual leave in excess of two weeks may be carried over and taken in the following calendar year until 30 June (subject to agreement with the employer). However, in the event of a prolonged absence due to illness or injury, maternity leave or childcare leave (which makes it objectively impossible to take annual leave in the current calendar year), the employee may take untaken annual leave until 31 December of the following year. In addition, the employer must give the employee written notice of the annual leave assessment for the current calendar year by 31 March 2022 at the latest (taking into consideration all the circumstances/conditions that the employee will meet in the calendar year in question).
The Act on Additional Measures to Prevent, Mitigate, Control, Recover and Eliminate the Consequences of COVID-19, which entered into force at the end of 2021 (the so-called PKP10), contains certain deviations from the aforesaid general rules. Thus, PKP10 provides that an employee who, due to urgent work needs (related to the control of the COVID-19 virus or to the consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic) was unable to take his annual leave for 2021 within the time limits laid down in ZDR-1 (nor for a minimum of two weeks), is entitled to take his annual leave for 2021 in any event until 31 December 2022, and not only until 30 June as is otherwise the case. A similar provision was already contained in PKP7, however, the above does not apply to employees who have been allowed by their employer to take their annual leave as normal, but only to those who actually meet the criterion that they were unable to take their annual leave within the statutory time limits because of urgent work needs linked to the control of the epidemic.
Furthermore, PKP10 regulates the situations provided for in the fourth paragraph of Article 162 of ZDR-1, i.e. when the employee has not had the opportunity to take leave due to absence for reasons of illness or injury, maternity leave or leave for childcare. These employees have the right to take all annual leave for 2020 not taken in 2021 until 1 April 2022 (regardless of whether they were also allowed to take annual leave within the statutory time limits). There are no changes to the right to holiday pay under PKP10.
Author: Golfam Abassi, Associate
