Holiday entitlement and holiday pay for manual workers are established by the national holidays agreement of 7 April 1978, the national engineering agreement of October 1979 and an agreed note of July 1981 issued by the EEF and the CSEU.
Together these agreements lay down:
- a basic annual holiday entitlement of 25 days;
- an entitlement to eight days of recognised public holiday;
- the method of payment including payment for single days of holiday;
- qualifying provisions for annual holiday; and
- payment for work done at periods of annual or recognised public holiday.
The national holidays agreement and agreed notes also specify:
- how to calculate holiday pay and the premiums to be paid for work done on holidays;
- the payment of individual days of holiday after the introduction of the 39-hour week;
- provisions dealing with payment for annual and recognised public holidays for part-time workers;
- the position of employees who are absent due to sickness at the time of an annual holiday period.
Annual holidays are arranged in accordance with the usual arrangements for fixing holidays in the establishment or district concerned. There are some local agreements that affect certain towns or districts (details may be obtained from your EEF Association (EEF Associations)). Ten days are normally taken as an annual summer holiday: the remainder is normally taken in complete weeks. The national agreements provide that employers may allocate days of annual holiday to be taken at the Christmas/New Year period to provide a bridge between a recognised public holiday and the weekend, and that the five additional days of holiday introduced by the 1979 agreement may also be fixed by the employer if no agreement is reached.