The option to reallocate holidays if sick
September 15, 2009
A recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has determined that if employees are sick whilst on scheduled annual leave, they may ‘re-allocate’ the days to another time, even if this means they cannot take the days in that holiday year and have to carry them forward to the next year.
This decision followed the highly publicised Stringer case earlier this year, which ruled that employees will continue to accrue their holidays when they are on long term sick leave, and that this could be carried forward if they are unable to take the leave in the current year.
This latest ruling covers situations when an employee is on holiday, and becomes sick. The ECJ has said that it is no longer allowed for an employer to say ‘tough luck, you lose those days’ if the employee is genuinely sick. And there lies the potential problem for a small number of employers; that this system is open to abuse from a handful of employees that may try to increase their holiday entitlement by claiming sickness during a period of annual leave. However it is recommended that the employee should provide clear medical evidence of the illness – i.e. a doctor’s note – to show that they would have been off work if they weren’t on holiday. In theory this could prove to be overruled as well in cases where the illness lasted less than 7 days, because employees can self-certify for this amount of time in normal sickness absences, however for now it is generally accepted that this is required to be able to reallocate holidays.
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