Too many holidays used.

[PatrickGL]

Hello!
I work for a company which has online system for booking holidays. It used to say that i still have 8 days of holidays remaining. As a student i work only 2 days per week so those specifically days i request us a holidays ( what gave me 4 weeks of holidays during the Christmas break. I used to working 5 days for years but i changed this to only 16h because of studies ( on September ).
I asked my manager do my holiday hours should not change, but he said if system says you have 8 left i should book it. So i did it. I'm getting paid weekly ( last time was around 27th of December) and since that day i am not getting any salary (I even had to borrow money for my rent which cost me 90f per week), and i guess this will continue till my holiday pay will be finished.

I understand circumstances, but i feel like they could pay for them as a extra ( cause for example 28 is Minimum for 5-day worker), or pay it and let me do extra day each week for "free" to pay it back instead of leaving me after Christmas without any money. Can i someone defend myself? I am getting only 130f per week, and i can't stay without any pound till 25th of January.

I didn't even get any message or information about it, so all this time i didn't know that they will be unpaid.
Any advice ?

King regards,
PatrickGL

[ULA]

If you have reduced your hours of work then your holiday entitlement will reduce accordingly. So if you worked full time up until September you would have accrued holiday based on your hours of work and entitlement up until that point, then from September onwards your holiday entitlement would be pro-rata based on the number of hours/days you have reduced to.

[PatrickGL]

i am aware of and i did even mention to my manager about it, but he said to not worry about it, while is accepted everything should be fine, but it's not.
It's almost like he would say it will be paid, and then ops, it won't. If i would know i wouldn't take any holidays.

[ULA]

Had you taken all the holiday you had earned up until you reduced your hours, for example whilst you were working full time you accrued 15 days holiday and you had taken them? It may help if I can work out what your entitlement would be. In which case I would need to know:

1. When your holiday year starts and finishes
2. Were you working full time at the start of the holiday year and when did this change to 16 hours a week?
3. Over how many days did you work your 16 hours?
4. What is the full annual holiday entitlement?
5. How many days holiday have you taken in total in the holiday year?

Does you contract say that your employer can deduct overtaken holidays from your salary?
Also have you been notified that you have not received wages due to overtaken holiday need to be repaid?

[PatrickGL]

1. 1/04 - 31/03
2 and 3. I worked full time till 1/09, then i changed to only Monday and Thursday as a working day.
4, 28 days for full timer.
5.whole 28, as I've been told.

Contract says that i am getting holidays following pro-rata or something like that.
So i have 28 days as a 5-day employee, 22.4 as a 4-day etc.

Contract says only that employer can deduct overtaken holidays from my final salary when i would leave earlier.
I haven't been notified that i will not receive wages and i don't know what will happened in next two weeks either. My manager do not know, but he waits for Head office response which is quiet since he emailed them few days ago.

As i said, i understand circumstances, but i feel really annoyed about fact that i didn't get any notification and understanding fact that after Christmas leaving your employee without money is quite rubbish

[ULA]

Does the 28 day include bank holidays? Just doing the calculation on what you holiday entitlement will be for the year.

What is the total number of days holiday you have taken since 1/04 2018?

[PatrickGL]

i took 28 days of holidays.
28 days do not include bank holidays.

[ULA]

I am sorry to say that by my calculation yes you have overtaken your holiday allowance for the year, however is does sound like the company has not dealt with this in the best way. Firstly it sounds like the system on which you checked your holiday allowance and both you and your manager relied on was not updated to take account of your reduced entitlement from Sept. Secondly when they discovered the mistake they did not discuss this with you and get your agreement to claim this back over an agreed period of time via your wages.

The term in your contract "employer can deduct overtaken holidays from my final salary when i would leave earlier" probably relates to the situation if you have overtaken holiday accrued on a pro-rata basis from the start of the holiday year to your leaving date.

In my view, based on what you have said, if you have not agreed to repay the overtaken holiday then this is an illegal deduction of wages. I suggest that when you are next in work you speak to your manager and explain that you believe that to be the situation. Ask why the company has not contacted you about the situation, then at least you could have had the opportunity to explain that the information on the system was incorrect and that even your manager, when you queried it with him, said to book it.