Christmas Public Holiday Entitlements
With just a few weeks to Christmas, rosters are being finalised and annual leave booked to maximise the break with family and friends. Public Holiday entitlements for part-time employees can cause confusion particularly where they fall over a weekend like this year.
Full-time workers have immediate entitlement to benefit for public holidays, and part-time workers have entitlement to benefit when they have worked a total of 40 hours in the previous 5 weeks. For clarification we have detailed the entitlements across the different scenarios;-
- If the business is closed on the public holiday and an employee would normally be due to work then they get their normal day’s pay (although they are off).
- If the business is open and an employee works, he/she is entitled to either paid time off on another day, an additional days annual leave or an additional day’s pay (as per pt 1.)
- If the business is open and the employee does not work as the public holiday falls on a day that they are not normally rostered to work then they are entitled to pay or time off equivalent to one fifth of their normal weekly wage.
- Where the public holiday falls on a day which is not a normal working day for that business (eg. a Saturday or Sunday) and employees are not normally working, employees still have entitlement to benefit, i.e a paid day off, within a week, an additional days annual leave or an additional days pay.
For those on variable hours, an additional day’s pay is what was paid for the normal daily hours last worked before the public holiday.
If an employee ceases to be employed during the week ending on the day before a public holiday, having worked during the 4 weeks preceding that week, he/she is entitled to receive pay for the public holiday. If a person is on temporary lay-off they are entitled to benefit for the public holidays that fall within the first thirteen weeks of lay-off.
