Employment Law Question WTF??

[lb99]

"If you don't work on Saturday then you won't get paid for Monday..." where Monday is a rostered day, and Saturday isn't, this cant be right.

Opinions please

[Karma]

"If you don't work on Saturday then you won't get paid for Monday..." where Monday is a rostered day, and Saturday isn't, this cant be right.

Opinions please

I'm no lawyer, but sounds like crap to me. You'd need to check your contract to make sure, and unless it explicitly says that's the case, then it's rubbish.

[Vagabond]

As far as I know if you work on Sat then you get paid for it, if Mon is a rosterd day you get paid annual leave and if you work Mon you get a day in lieu, but also dependant on the "Agreement " that you signed.

[Steam]

Sounds totally illegal to me. The holidays act is quite clear, and I don't think you can sign your rights away in a contract, it's like the consumer guarantees act, nothing can overrule it.

My boss constantly tries to make me work 60+ hours a week at my shitty $12 job, and I constantly tell him no fuck off you dick. Bosses are shit

[lb99]

My work isn't that nasty, these poor people are process workers, mostly from overseas on a working holiday, I overheard it whilst I was there on other buisiness, The management line is this...."if you are going away for the weekend, then you have made yourself unavailable for Monday, which (if it wasn't a holiday) is a normal work day, hence you would not normally be here, so we dont have to pay you, if you dont work on saturday (not a normal work day) then we won't be paying you for Monday".
It might be legit, but its just plain nasty, they do the same at easter "if you cant come in sat/sun then we don't have to pay you for fri/mon.
The people that own this company are big money vineyard developers here and are very well known, all of the bosses will be paid for monday regardless
You can bet on it

cunts like this should be made to suffer

[Steam]

Ahh.. the excellent thing about a tight labour market and working on vineyards is you can just not turn up for a couple of days and they won't do anything, they need the cheap labour so much.
Worked for me in Central Otago, I just turned up to work when I was poor and went tramping and had fun the rest of the time. They complained but needed all the hands they could muster.

Tell your friends to have a good weekend and come back to work Tuesday, fuck the company.

[marty]

if they are on contract/casual, then they're out of luck - if they are on wages/salary though, and their normal roster has them working a monday, then they are entited to be paid for the public holiday.
i suggest they are are on contract pay, not wages/salary. it saves the employer from having to pay paye/acc/holiday pay etc

[Jantar]

If they are casual employees, then they don't get paid for Monday unless they actually work Monday.

For All full time employees where monday is a normal rostered day and saturday isn't:
If the worker takes the monday off, monday is paid as if it is a normal workday.
If the worker works the monday, then in addition to normal pay receives a day in lieu and is paid an extra half time pay (effectively being time and a half for the day)
Rostered workers are not normally given the option but simply work their normal roster, and get paid the extra and also get an extra day in lieu.

Whether or not they work on saturday has nothing to do with the provisions for monday, and as Staem commented, no-one can contract out of the act.

[lb99]

if they are casual then its full time casual, 40+ a week, regular hours for wages, just that the bosses are cunts, they used to offer a bonus if you did 40hrs, something like a dollar an hour, not a bad deal, an extra 40/wk just to turn up and stay put BUT it the managent set you home before the 40 was up (power cut, whatever) you didn't get any bonus even though it wasn't your fault, what a pack of pricks

[marty]

if they are on wages, normal work hours mon-fri, then they must get paid. i suggest a call to a lawyer or an employment court threat is in order. just make sure you have the facts first.

easiest way is: is paye taken out of their pay?

[Ixion]

The question of whether a public holiday would normally be a working day (and thus payable) is one of fact in each case

Holidays Act 2003


12.Determination of what would otherwise be working day—
(1)This section applies for the purpose of determining an employee's entitlements to a public holiday, an alternative holiday, to sick leave, or to bereavement leave.
(2)If it is not clear whether a day would otherwise be a working day for the employee, the employer and employee must take into account the factors listed in subsection (3), with a view to reaching agreement on the matter.
(3)The factors are—
(a)the employee's employment agreement:
(b)the employee's work patterns:
(c)any other relevant factors, including—
(i)whether the employee works for the employer only when work is available:
(ii)the employer's rosters or other similar systems:
(iii)the reasonable expectations of the employer and the employee that the employee would work on the day concerned.
(4)For the purposes of public holidays, if an employee would otherwise work any amount of time on a public holiday, that day must be treated as a day that would otherwise be a working day for the employee.

So, if a worker usually works Mondays, he is entitled to a paid holiday. Working Saturday is nothing to do with it, if the worker does not usually work Saturdays. There might be many reasons why a worker could not work on a Saturday. The only question is "Is the workers normal work pattern such that, had he forgotten about it being a public holiday, he would have expected to go to work that day".

It only gets tricky with casual or rostered labour (where there is no regular pattern); or when the public holiday falls on a weekend, and the worker sometimes works weekends , sometimes does not.

Tell your friend to talk to his union delegate. Not in a union? Tch, for shame, for shame, why do you suppose it is that ANY of us have public holidays? Cos of the unions is why. Anyway, in that case he should call the Labour Dept.

Oh, and as noted , the Holidays Act canot be contracted out of. Any such provision in an employment contract is null and void (Holidays Act S6). And payment for a public holiday cannot be made conditional on some other requirement (such as working Saturday)

[Colapop]

As far as the originally posted question goes - They are not legally allowed to tell their workers that, if there is a posted roster. The likelihood is that the workers being reffered top are migrant or seasonal workers most of whom do not have contracts so are at the mercy of the employer/s.

Oh ok as stated in the legisaltion above (cursed slow typing...)

[Oakie]

Yeah, what everyone else said. Saturday has no bearing on it. If a person normally works on a Monday and the only reason they didn't work this particular Monday was because Monday was a Public Holiday then they get paid what they would have been paid had they worked. End of story!

[T.W.R]

"If you don't work on Saturday then you won't get paid for Monday..." where Monday is a rostered day, and Saturday isn't, this cant be right.

Opinions please

As others have said working or not working the Saturday has no bearing on payment of the Public holiday on the Monday.

[Quote]
Employment Law Guide


Payment for Public Holidays
The General rule, set out in s7A(1) of the Holidays Act, is that workers are entitled to a holiday on pay when any of the 11 public holidays falls on a day that would be otherwise have been worked for that person. This rule applies to full-time and part-time workers and to shift workers and those on rosters who are scheduled to work on a public holiday.

Employees who would not normally work on the day on which a holiday falls are not entitled to a paid holiday. For example, people who are employed from Monday to Friday are not entitled to a paid holiday when Waitangi Day falls on a Saturday.

Nor is a person who works for four hours on Mondays and Fridays entitled to a paid holiday if Anzac Day falls on a Wednesday. But that part-time worker will be entitled to a paid holiday when the anniversary day is transferred to a Monday or when Christmas Day falls on a Friday.

Entitlement Absolute

As with annual holidays, the entitlement to public holidays is absolute: employees are entitled to a paid holiday either on the actual day of the holiday or at some other time, provided that the day on which the holiday falls would have been a normal working day for the employees.

[Quote].