Christmas Public Holiday Entitlements
There are three public holidays coming up over the festive season – Christmas Day, St. Stephens Day and New Year’s Day. Although many offices across the country will close during this period it can be one of the busiest times of the year for industries including retail, hospitality, and hair and beauty. So what public holiday entitlement are employees entitled to over this time?
Full-time employees
Full-time employees have immediate public holiday entitlement to one of the following:
• A paid day off that day
• A paid day off within a month of that day
• An additional day of annual leave
• An additional days pay
Part-time employees
If a public holiday falls on a day that a part-time employee usually works, they are entitled to one of the public holiday benefits as listed above, if they have worked at least 40 hours in total in the 5 weeks prior to the public holiday.
Where the public holiday falls on a day on which the employee does not normally work, the employee is entitled to one fifth of his/her normal weekly wage.
Sick leave, absence and public holiday entitlement
If a full time employee is on sick leave during a public holiday, they are entitled to one of the public holiday benefits as listed above. If a part time employee is on sick leave during a public holiday, they are also entitled to one of the public holiday benefits listed above, if they have worked at least 40 hours in total in the 5 weeks prior to the public holiday.
Employees absent due to maternity leave, adoptive leave, parental leave, annual leave and jury duty accrue public holiday entitlement as if they were at work. Employees on carer’s leave continue to accrue public holiday entitlement for the first 13 weeks absence on carer’s leave.
The following type of absences occurring immediately before the public holiday will not be entitled to public holiday benefit.
• Absence in excess of 52 weeks due to occupational injury
• Absence in excess of 26 weeks due to illness or injury
• Absence in excess of 13 weeks for another reason and authorised by the employer including lay off
• Absence by reason of strike
Termination of employment
Employees who leave employment during the week ending before a public holiday and have worked the 4 weeks prior to that week are entitled to receive the benefits outlined above for that public holiday.
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Zero Hour Contracts - New Legislation
A new Bill, the Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2017, was published last week. According to the Employment and Social Protection Minister, Regina Doherty, the new Bill will prohibit zero hour contracts in most circumstances, as well as aiming to tackle problems caused by the increased casualisation of work and to strengthen the regulation of precarious work.
Key elements of the new Bill include:
Employers must give employees basic terms of employment within 5 days.
Within five days of a new employee starting employment, the employer must provide them with five core terms of employment. These 5 terms are:
- The full name of the employer and employee
- The address of the employer
- The expected duration of the contract (where it is a temporary or fixed-term contract)
- The rate or method of calculating pay
- What the employer reasonably expects the normal length of the employee’s working day and week will be.
Employers who fail to provide these basic terms, who deliberately mislead or give false information will be open to prosecution. This is a new offence.
In line with current legislation, the remaining terms of employment will still need to be provided within two months of the employee’s start date.
Zero hour contracts to be Prohibited in most circumstances.
Zero hour contracts will be prohibited in all circumstances except in cases of genuine casual work or where they are essential to allow employers to provide cover in an emergency situation or to cover short-term absences.
New minimum payment to be introduced.
Employees called into work but sent home again without work will now be entitled to a payment. Additionally, if an employee has not worked at all in a week or has worked less than 25% of their contract hours, they will also be entitled to a minimum payment. The payment shall be calculated as the pay that the employee would have receive had they worked the lesser of:
- 15 hours
- 25% of their normal contractual hours
- 25% of the work done for the employer that week
That minimum payment must be three times the National Minimum Wage or the rate set out in any applicable Employment Regulation Order.
Banded Hours
The Bill introduces new rights for new employees whose contract of employment does not reflect the reality of the hours they habitually work. For example, the contract states 15 hours per week where in reality the employee usually works 30 hours per week. After a work period of 18 months, an employee will be able to submit a written request to change their contractual hours. The employees request must be granted within two months, only in exceptional cases will the employer be permitted to refuse the request.
Penalisation of Employees
Employees seeking to invoke their employment rights under the Bill will have strong protections against penalisation. Where an employee successfully makes a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission, they could be entitled to up to four weeks’ remuneration.
What’s next
The Bill was presented to the Dail on Thursday 7th December 2017, it is hoped that the Bill will be taken at Second Stage early in the New Year.
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Why not get more for you and your employees when making Bonus payments?
As the long dark evenings set in and Halloween is over, the build up to the most wonderful time of the year will begin again! At this time of the year a significant amount of employers pay-out a Christmas/annual bonus and no matter how little or large the bonus is, a large portion ends up being paid over to the Revenue if it is put through the payroll as a taxable addition.
For example, if an employee’s salary is €35,000 per annum and they receive a bonus of €1,000 at Christmas, this employee would only receive around half of this amount after tax, employee PRSI and USC. The company would also be liable to pay 10.75% employer PRSI on the bonus, so in addition to giving the bonus of €1,000 there is also the extra €107.50 meaning the bonus is in fact costing the company €1,107.50.
The Solution
Revenue allow one small non-cash benefit per employee per annum up to the value of €500, PAYE, PRSI OR USC do not need to be applied to the benefit. A gift card or voucher seems to be the most popular way of allowing this payment to be made to the employee. The most popular gift card would seem to be One4All gift cards. Thesaurus Payroll Manager offers unique integration with One4All allowing employers to purchase gift cards quickly and easily for their employees. The integration offers a range of benefits, including:
- The ability to pay via EFT, a facility not available to regular gift card customers
- No additional charges, unlike when purchasing direct from the Post Office
- Tracking of gift cards purchased so that you as an employer are alerted if you attempt to purchase more than one gift card for an employee in any one tax year
- Prevention from ordering a card in excess of the exemption limit, i.e. €500.
Please note: where a benefit exceeds €500 in value, the entire amount will be subject to PAYE, PRSI and USC.
Purchasing gift cards through Thesaurus Payroll Manager is both simple and straightforward. To order, simply click on the Gift Card option, fill in your company details, select the amount for each employee's gift card and click to proceed to the gift card website. The software will bring you to the gift card website where you will arrange payment and delivery details.
It is also possible to order Me2You gift cards through Thesaurus Payroll Manager, if required tick to order from Me2You.
For further details click here.
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