TUC Press Release (12/01/07)
- Millions to benefit from extra holiday.
Millions of hard-working employees across the UK have
much to smile about today,
and many of those who will now get more time off work will be low-paid women.
It is a victory for union campaigning, which has long pushed for UK leave to be
increased so that it is more in line with the holidays enjoyed by other workers
in
Europe.
But it's disappointing that people will have to wait until next year before
getting their
full increase. The change to leave is affordable and could have been
introduced in
one go. The Government didn't need to opt for phasing in, as the cost of
introducing
the measure has been overstated.
Some employers will moan at having to give their staff additional holiday, but
smart
bosses already give their employees more than the minimum entitlement, because
it makes good business sense to do so.
The Working Time Regulations (1998) established a statutory minimum of four
weeks
paid annual leave. However, as there is no statutory right to be paid for
public holidays,
unscrupulous employers were able to count them as part of the annual leave
entitlement.
Following a sustained campaign by the trade unions, the Labour Party included a
commitment to deal with this issue in their manifesto for the 2005 General
Election.
Today's proposals will increase the statutory minimum entitlement to 5.6 weeks.
This
will mean that full-time workers get at least 28 days paid leave per year, with
a pro-rata
entitlement for part-time workers. The increase is scheduled to happen in
two phases:
October 2007 - 4.8 weeks, October 2008 - 5.6 weeks.
(All TUC Press Releases can be found at
www.tuc.org.uk)