irish people forfeiting annual leave to enhance prospects of promotion

stuart said:

Annual leave is compulsory and employers are the ones with the obligation to make sure that employees take it

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According to this DETE booklet:

What if an employee does not take holidays within the leave year?

The holidays must be given to the employee within the leave year or, with the employee’s consent, within 6 months of the following leave year. It is the responsibility of the employer to ensure that the employee takes his/her full statutory leave allocation within the appropriate period. Employees may, with the consent of the employer, carry over holidays in excess of statutory minimum leave to a following leave year.

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I'm not aware of any penalties that apply should an employer fail to ensure that an employee utilises his/her full annual leave entitlements.

Hi Stuart and Clubman,

My first reaction was to challenge Stuart when he stated that it was compulsory for employers to force their employees to take their full annual leave allowance. My reply was going to be along the lines of Clubman's. But then I began to think that it might not be as black and white as I first thought....

It is clear that the employee has an entitlement to take statutory leave (20 days a year for a full time employee). Moreover the "Organisation of Working Time Act 1997" provides that the employee is entitled to take a least 2 week consecutive days leave in the year.
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I had a case a few years ago where an employee (with the agreement of his direct management) wanted to take a week in March, a week in September, a week in November and a week at Christmas. Our HR department intevened (as only HR departments can) and insisted that the employee was obliged to take two consequtive weeks and that the company was obliged to enforce this by the 1997 act.

I rang DETE and they stated that the spirit of the law was to protect the rights and entitlements of the employee and that this meant that if there were no operational reasons to that contrary that the employee could take the leave as requested. The HR backed down and the employee took his 4 seperate weeks annual leave.

On the other hand an employee and his employer could not agree to take a half day per fortnight as annual leave, could they? I imagine it would be in breach of the spirit of the act.

On to the substantive question:
Is a company obliged to enforce the working time act and ensure that employees take their full amount of statutory leave?

You could argue that a lax management that allowed employees to habitually not use up their annual leave entitlements are in breach of the act. In the same way as if they allowed them work long excessively long (unpaid/paid) hours. If there was an accident or an employee was suffering from stress could the company be challenged if they alllowed an amosphere of long hours and no leave to occur?

Finally, the americans have a term for this kind of behaviour "presenteeism"

ajapale

ps
Do posters think that the interesting question posted here "Are companies obliged to force employees to take up thier full statutory annual leave allowance?" should be promoted to the "Jobs and Careers" Section?

Incidently Im not a HR professional or lawyer.

ajapale said:

On to the substantive question:
Is a company obliged to enforce the working time act and ensure that employees take their full amount of statutory leave?

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As far as I'm aware they are not obliged to but I am open to correction on this. I could find no obvious mention of any penalties that apply to employers who don't do this. On the other hand an employer who habitually prevented employees from availing of their leave entitlements would presumably be subject to some sort of penalties? I think we need a HR expert to answer some of these questions.