LABOUR LAW: LEGAL PERSPECTIVES OF ANNUAL LEAVE THAT EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES NEED TO KNOW
Annual leave is paid time off-work allowed by employers to employees to be used for whatever the employee wishes.
It is a legal requirement for all employers to allow at least 21 (twenty-one) paid holidays for their employees each year. In other wards annual leave is a legal right to an employee although many employees tend to think that it is a privilege granted by the employer.
However, for several reasons, workers may sometimes choose not to take the holidays that they’re entitled to.
That may sound strange, but sometimes a culture can arise within a workplace that somehow makes taking holidays into something to be looked down upon.
It’s easy to think that employers should be pleased that their employees are always at work and never take holidays.
However, this shouldn’t be the case because several employee problems like; burnouts, stress, depression, sickness absence and staff turnover are consequences of employees’ failure to take the annual holidays or taking too few holidays.
The way to avoid burnouts and keep your employees fresh and engaged is to encourage the taking of holidays. After all, your employees are legally entitled to it.
Holiday entitlement should be communicated to employees as soon as they join the company, and be readily available in their employee handbook.
It’s important that holiday leave is managed and monitored, and there should be a culture that encourages employees to plan and take their holiday entitlement.
The Parliament, through legislation and the Courts of Uganda through their decisions have established the following legal positions pertaining to annual leave;
- The employee ought to request and give advance notice to the employer of his or her intention to go on annual leave. Taking annual leave without notice to the employer amounts to abscondment from duty which gives an employer a right to dismiss the employee.
- An employee who fails or shies from requesting to take his or her paid holidays forfeits the right and cannot later come up to claim for them or any payment for untaken leave.
- An employer who receives notice of leave booking from the employee can agree with the employee to postpone the leave dates to subsequent months. This happens especially if there is a project which needs to be concluded before the employee breaks off for his or her holidays.
- An employee can agree to have his or her leave days postponed to the following year following a request from his or her employer or supervisor. In such a case, the employee would take a double portion of holidays for two years. That is to say the previous year when leave was not taken plus the annual leave for the current year.
- An employee can opt to cash in on his or her leave days if such option is acceptable to the employer. The employer is obliged to pay the employee a cash equivalent for the untaken leave. This pay is totally separate from the employee’s monthly salary. It is like his or her “kyeyo money” earned in lieu of annual leave.
- An employer who ignores the employee’s request for leave cannot later accuse the employee who opts to take it anyway. The employer cannot claim it to be abscondment from duty. In fact, any disciplinary penalty or dismissal from employment on account of the employee taking annual leave without approval from the employer who ignored the request can be successfully challenged in courts of law and the employer be made to pay huge sums to the employee as damages.
- An employee who is expressly refused or denied to take leave by the employer can decide to quit the job and successfully pursue a court case of constructive dismissal by the employer. The employee only needs to prove that he or she requested for the leave in writing but it was rejected without a plausible reason and alternative.
It is advisable to always seek legal advice before taking any legal action.
The writer is a labour law practitioner and an Associate working with Nakiranda & Co. Advocates.
Godfrey Kyeyune
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