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Workers 'cheated' out of £2billion in holiday pay by bad bosses, says TUC

Mirror September 08, 2024 12:39 PM

Workers are being "cheated" out of £2 billion in holiday pay with some bad bosses blocking leave requests, a report finds today.

Research by the TUC found that 1.1 million employees did not take any of the paid holiday they were entitled to last year.

Workers are legally entitled to 28 days paid leave for a typical five-day week, with pro-rata entitlement for those who work fewer than five days. The union body pointed to unrealistic workloads and bad cultures where workers fear they'll be treated unfavourably for taking leave, as well requests being turned down.

The report, published as the TUC's annual Congress begins today, said the "missing weeks" of holiday paid added up to £2billion or £1,800 per employee.

Black and ethnic minority staff were worst affected, with 6% not getting any paid holiday last year, compared to 4% of white employees.

The jobs with the highest numbers of staff losing out were waiters and waitresses (59,000), care workers and home carers (55,000), and kitchen and catering assistants (50,000), showing that low paid workers were most at risk of losing paid holiday entitlement, said the report.

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: "We all deserve a break from work to spend time off with our friends and family, but more than a million working people have been deprived of any of the paid leave they are due, and hundreds of thousands more have been denied basic rights like being paid the minimum wage.

"The Conservative government sat back and let bad employers cheat their staff out of their basic workplace rights. Tory ministers were more concerned about stopping people getting what they were due by introducing anti-union measures, than funding enforcement bodies properly.

"Now it's time to reset the dial and to end the Tories' race to the bottom. This week at Congress we will be debating how we can drive up standards at work. These shocking findings show why we need the Employment Rights Bill and the Fair Work Agency."