[esotericn]

I have never worked an hourly paid job in the UK that has paid holiday.

I'm not sure they exist, it's sort of what hourly pay is - you get it when you work and not when you don't.

Personally I'm not sure it's something that makes sense, it should just be factored in to the wage. Most hourly paid jobs I know of don't have regular hours, even - how much do you pay for a week's holiday when some weeks the employee works 8 hours and some 24 hours? An average? Of what, if they've only been there a few months, say?

Now, time off, e.g. whether someone practically actually can take time off during the year without being sacked, is a different matter entirely.

Historically (before my career as a software developer) whenever I've felt like I need a bit of time out I've either had to negotiate it or just leave. It's usually far easier to quit a job than to convince your manager to let you go away for a few weeks. Sometimes the bureaucracy doesn't even, well, understand it.

I am personally completely convinced that the only answer to these sorts of issues is just to pay people properly. If they choose to chuck the money away regardless, it's on them.

Building some savings early in my adult life and maintaining them has been the best thing I've ever done. It turns the matter of "does this job offer holiday" "can I get the weekend off" stuff into an academic concern because you are in control.

[DanBC]

Hang on - paid holiday is a legal requirement.

https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

This applies to people on zero-hour contracts as well.

[theoh]

What does paid holiday mean, exactly, in a zero-hour contract? If there's no guaranteed minimum rate at which one is paid during any given period, it seems like there can be no way to assert that one is on "paid leave".

I tried googling it and found this, which seems inconclusive: https://www.breathehr.com/blog/zero-hours-contracts-holiday-...

[detaro]

According to the gov.uk page above, it's based on the actual hours worked: if you've accumulated X hours since start of the calculation period, you get the appropriate amount of time allocated. Presumably they can just like normal employees request time off for a specific time, and get paid for their time during that? For people only having very few hours, it seems weird, but if someone gets scheduled a lot the right to block out time seems relevant.

[DanBC]

> Irregular hours

> People working irregular hours (like shift workers or term-time workers) are entitled to paid time off for every hour they work. They need to calculate their leave entitlement for irregular hours.

That takes you to this calculator: https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-holiday-entitlement

[theoh]

Do you see the point I'm making, though?

Edit: I'm not asking about the rate at which paid leave builds up, I'm asking about how the employee can ever be said to have used it up. Given that zero-hours contracts are a Bad Thing, I don't expect this to make any sense.

If I have accrued 24 hours of paid leave, and potentially work 6hrs a day, typically one day a week, do I need to pre-emptively use all of those 24 hours just to take leave for a block of 4 weekdays? It seems like I might have to, in the face of an unscrupulous employer.

[esotericn]

News to me! Perhaps I was ripped off.

I've either done short-term stints or been salaried for over a decade now.

Cheers for the link!

[OldFatCactus]

Please edit your earlier post, it is misleading

[flattone]

"if they fail to save it's on them"

while this is mechanically true everywhere i look it isnt a comprehensive implementation of managing varieties of types of people toward the betterment of humanity

[Someone1234]

> I have never worked an hourly paid job in the UK that has paid holiday.

It has been a legal requirement since 1938, so hypothetical that is possible if you're in your mid 95 or older.

[esotericn]

Turns out you're right. I can't edit the post as the time has passed.

I've actually just never taken holiday from an hourly job, since it wouldn't have made sense at the time (if I were aware I would have probably tried to fill the time with more work.. )

I assume then that I should have been paid in my final pay. Ten years back now, I've been contracting or salaried since.

[adrusi]

Or, you know, never worked an hourly job.

[tzs]

> Personally I'm not sure it's something that makes sense, it should just be factored in to the wage. Most hourly paid jobs I know of don't have regular hours, even - how much do you pay for a week's holiday when some weeks the employee works 8 hours and some 24 hours? An average? Of what, if they've only been there a few months, say?

If you want full time hourly employees (40 hours per week) to earn two weeks of paid vacation per year, then you have hourly workers accrue vacation time at a rate of 1 hour vacation earned for every 25 hours on the clock.

This system handles people who hours worked varies from week to week, and it handles people who have not been there long enough to earn the full two weeks--ever 5 weeks they have accumulated a vacation day, so if they want to take a week off 6 months in, say, that works.

It also works for tracking vacation time for salaried employees. For salaried employees you just force the hours worked to 8 per day in the program that calculates vacation accrual, regardless of the actual hours worked (assuming that you even track actual hours worked for salaried employees).

[esotericn]

I think you're missing the point another poster brought up which is that a "holiday hour" for a real hourly worker (e.g. one with flexible hours, shift work etc) is nebulous.

So let's say under your system an employee works an average of 8 hours a week. After half a year they've accrued 8 hours of holiday.

That's 1 day.

The pay isn't the issue but the legal obligation to allow the worker to not work, if that makes sense.

Whether holidays are unpaid or paid is just shuffling cashflow in time, the real problem is the amount of holiday that's possible.

[tptacek]

If you work 1 day a week, after half a year you can still take a week off; your 1 vacation day, added to the 4 other workdays you don't work.

[esotericn]

A part-time/ZHC worker in the UK doesn't work a set number of days a week.

They're assigned a variable number of hours per week. It might be 4 this week, 20 the next, 0 after that, etc.

You wait for the rota and work what you've been assigned.

It's kind of like a lower-level version of being on call.

It only really even works in the first place because we have all sorts of insane welfare subsidies that mean people have their income topped up to make up the shortfall.

I would imagine something like this must exist in the US. A quick google brought up https://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-work-irregular-hou... which sounds basically like what exists here.