The former employee was required to obtain financial information from the Inland Revenue Department about his earnings so that a claim could be calculated.
Because the employer failed to respond to the request to provide the information and was reluctant to respond to correspondence the Inspector was obliged to make up a claim from incomplete records and the employees recollection. This can be a recipe for disaster for employers.
In this case the employee received an award for all of the annual leave they recalled not taking and the employer faced a fine they had to pay to the Employment Relations Authority.
It is best that we remind ourselves that the Holidays Act places obligations on employers to keep good records. Those records are required to keep the information specified in section 81 of the Holidays Act. There is a long list of requirements and they relate to annual leave, sick leave and bereavement leave.
It is also important to note that co-operation with the appropriate authorities is always recommended. Non co-operation tends to lead to difficult relations which in turn lead to not so good outcomes.
It is also timely to think about what the government is proposing for annual leave.
They campaigned on the fact that they wanted to give employees the right to trade the fourth week of annual leave for cash. All indications are that the government will have the legislation passed and ready to give effect to this policy for a commencement date of 1 April 2010.
What the Prime Minister has said is that it will be up to employees to approach the employer about this issue and that no employer will be able to approach the employee. They seem to believe that there is a wish for some workers to have the three weeks annual leave and to trade the fourth week for money. There is no indication yet as to what the conversion rate of holiday to money will be worth and how many fourth weeks the money can be traded for, but that detail will undoubtedly come with the passing of the legislation.
