Twenty eight days, you guys! Twenty eight days!

It doesn't seem a very Labour Party policy to me

Bank holidays time off law 'will penalise firms'
By Harry Wallop, Business Correspondent

(Filed: 28/08/2006)

Businesses face having to pick up a multi-million-pound increase in their wages bill next year because of a change in the law about bank holidays.

Theme parks such as Paultons Park could face a large wages bill increase

The change will have a big impact on any employer that is open for business on a bank holiday - such as hotels, restaurants, shops and theme parks.

Under the Work and Families Bill, statutory holidays for UK workers will be increased from 20 days to 28 days. This big increase is to close the loophole that allows many employers to force their workers to take bank holidays as part of their statutory 20 days.

As it stands, there is no law stating that workers must take any of the eight bank holidays and, according to the TUC, 700,000 people worked on Christmas Day last year.

Employers have serious misgivings about the new rules. Bob Cotton, the chief executive of the British Hospitality Association, estimates that implementing them will cost his industry £300m.

He said: "That's an extra 3.5pc on payroll costs. If you start pushing up the wage bill too high you start shedding labour to pay for those left in work.

"It affects the hospitality industry more than anyone else because bank holidays are our busiest days."

Mr Cotton estimates that 60pc of hotel and restaurant staff work on bank holidays. Though they will invariably be paid extra, they do not get days off in lieu as well.

Under the new law employers will have to pay not only for the extra time but also for more staff in order to cover for the eight extra days.

A spokesman for the GMB union dismissed industry's concerns that companies would have to shed staff to fund the extra cost increases. The spokesman said: "They've cried wolf in the past. When the minimum wage was introduced back in 1999 at £3.60 the CBI said millions of jobs would be lost. But there are now more people in employment than back then.

"There are two million people who get only 20 days' holiday a year and that includes bank holidays. Everyone else gets 28. It's a matter of fairness," the spokesman said.

The Work and Families Bill has passed through the Lords and awaits Royal assent before becoming law later this year.

Maybe:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/mpdb/img/37204.jpg

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Shaun Woodward of the Dead

Excellent!

(Still, I'm convinced there are zombies involved somehow.)

at my last australian job they had just implemented a program where, in addition your 4 weeks per year and 365 sicks day every two years, you could 'buy' up to 3 months more vacation time. so if you wanted to take june through august off you could but it would cost half your pay for that period which would be taken out incrementally over 12 months, before tax, of course, and you still have 4 weeks of paid vacation waiting for you. so by losing 6 weeks pay for the year you could work only 8 months a year. pretty sweet, no?

now im in amorica i get 3 sick days, 10 vacation days and 5 'optional holidays' a year and im told they are being generous. suck.

I currently have -2.24 days of vacation.