Employers stingy with holiday

People who call this gripe "anarchic" and "communist" are truly the plague that allows employers and indeed the government to get away with this kind of insult. A job is not the most important thing in life, and anyone who bleats that tried and tested defence of the intellectually inferior ("It's how the real world works", "Boohoo lazy people!" and such) really doesn't have the capacity to understand that it is their own unquestioning conformity and inability to question "authority" that leads to such shoddy treatment.

Anyone who actively WANTS to spend the majority of their day wasting hours of their life is the one to decry, in my book.

The way things are at the moment I think everyone who still has a job should be grateful and not keep carping about how much holiday they get!

Small companies find it hard enough anyway to manage without an employee when they are away and still pay them.

My employer managed to get round that one too - we got the minimum 24 days, but we're forced to take 3 days of our holiday entitlement during the Christmas period - when the office is shut anyway! I was chuffed to learn that the minimum hols have went up to 28 days, but somehow my boss has found a way round this and we've not actually got any more days, but instead the public hols (e.g Easter Monday, Mayday, etc) that we got off historically are now part of our holiday leave in the same way as those Xmas hols and not additional. This is perfectly legal, as employers are not obliged to give you bank hols, etc off. What a joke?!

My ex boss worked the holiday game.
New staff 12 days paid holiday and 8 public holidays made the 20 days minimum per year.
Managerial Technical staff 25 days minimum plus 8 public holidays. He tried the opt out working time directive, till it was pointed out it had to be a seperate document and not in the Contract.
Needless to say he has immigrant labour falling over themselves to work for him.

I agree whole heartedly with this gripe. I'd like to add that I'm annoyed how some companies allocate holiday differently to different people. You'd rightly expect, say, managers to get more holiday entitlement than ground-level employees. But when you have been at a company 5 years and are getting less holiday than someone who started 5 months ago, thats just wrong. I think all companies should reward loyal employees with +1 extra day holiday for each year they've been there, as a bare minimum. It improves moral, and stops people taking "sick" days. So it's in the companys' interests to give more holiday. At least with holiday it can be planned, booked, etc. unlike "sick" days which can happen quite randomly.

Jobs for the boys; this is wonderful for you, but have you thought about where your wages come from?

Oh yes you have!! You told the rest of us to keep paying the taxes. Lovely. Problem is; if everyone was a civil servant.........?

Join the civil service gravy train!! I did, and just in time too. Not only is my job secure during this recession, but I get 30 days paid leave IN ADDITION to more than ten public and privilege holidays. I finish work at 3.30pm daily too. I'd never go back to working for a company, let alone a small business again. As for being self-employed.. did that for 10 years and never again; no paid holidays there. Now I take a couple of extra days holiday to prepare for and unwind from my foreign holidays.

I write this on the first day of my second holiday this month. Keep paying the taxes =D

Ha ha very droll, Dave.
You got your facts wrong. Throughout the group we expect employees to work 80 hours a week but they do get weekends (alternate) off for good behaviour, and either Christmas Day or Good Friday subject to being able to prove that they are churchgoers. Naturally we don't employ any ethnic or religious minorities so the issue of Muslim holidays and so on does not arise.
Those over the age of 65 are allowed to call me by my name, to all others, I am 'Sir'.

MikeP, you sound like the illegitimate lovechild of Thatcher/Tebbit. I guess you run a small business and expect your employees to work 75 hours a week with no annual leave entitlement and call you Sir and tell them that if they don't like it you can find some "fuzzy wuzzies " to do their job for sixpence a month. No wonder we are in the mire with attitudes like yours.
Small businessman, just because all employees have a right to 28 days leave doesn't mean they'll get it, just the same as the minimum wage rule doesn't always apply.

Andy

Have I read that correctly? Only five days a year paid holiday? I assume the 5 days is in addition to any statutory paid holidays but even so that is absolutely dreadful.

As part of the EU British firms are slowly but surely being forced to give a civilised amount of leave but it has taken a very long time for the UK to even begin to catch up with the rest of Europe. I'm sure if they could get away with it some British firms would love to only give 5 days paid holiday.

smallbusiness man : You are 100% correct but most of the comments and the original gripe are from people vwho are just too bone idle to work and too ignorant to understand basic business economics.

They want service 24/7, and they want 35 days or more holiday, and more money but they don't think that this is paradoxical and has implications. Then when employers bring in other people who are prepared to work harder and longer and be grateful for the opportunity they complain that their jobs are being taken away by 'immigrants'.

I'm sick of hearing about the 'exploited workers' and the 'oppressed masses' and all this Trotskyite nonsense. These people need to catch a wake-up, smell the coffee, and realise that communism is, thankfully, dead, and we're in a free market.

I am surprised at the inaccuracy of this 'gripe' and it's anarchic tone. The CIPD annual survey indicates that approx 90% of employers in all sectors give 25 days+ holiday and from 1st April all employees will have a statutory right to 28 days in any case. Has the contributor not noticed that there is a world-wide recession and that employers need to maximise the contribution of their staff just to survive? Providing lengthy holiday is hardly conducive to business survival!

It should also be remembered that the majority of employees in the UK work for small businesses who can ill-afford the luxury of staff being away for long periods of time. It's all right for large corporates or the public sector (whose holidays are paid for from the public purse anyway) to give generous holidays but when it comes to the small business it just doesn't make sense. In any case, a lot of my small business clents tell me that their staff don't take all their leave entitlement in any case as they don't know what to do with the time off!