Can an employer treat part-time workers less favourably than it treats full-time workers?
Can the terms and conditions of employment differ between full- and part-time workers?
What happens if an employer treats part-time workers less favourably than comparable full-time workers?
Can an employer choose to employ a full-time person rather than two part-time people?
Is an employer at liberty to determine its own levels of pay?
How can part-time workers' rights to indivisible benefits such as company cars be dealt with?
What are part-time workers' rights to paid holiday?
If a part-time or shift-working employee is not scheduled to work on a bank holiday, is he or she entitled to an additional day's holiday?
If a part-time employee is contracted to work a half day on a bank holiday, is he or she entitled to an additional half day's holiday to take at another time?
Are part-time workers entitled to bank holidays?
Under the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable
Treatment) Regulations 2000 (SI 2000/1551) a part-time worker has the right not to be treated
less favourably than a comparable full-time worker on the grounds that he or she
is a part-timer. This includes entitlement to bank holidays.
Where an employer includes bank holidays in the statutory minimum
entitlement to paid holiday under the Working Time Regulations 1998 this is
unlikely to cause problems. However, where full-time workers are entitled to
bank holidays in addition to their statutory entitlement to holiday,
difficulties may arise.
It may be fair to allow part-time workers to take a bank holiday
where their day of work coincides with a bank holiday, particularly if a shift
system means that both full-timers and part-timers are equally likely to be
rostered to work on a bank holiday. However, where workers work fixed days each
week, part-timers could be disadvantaged by such a practice. As most bank
holidays fall on a Monday or a Friday, those part-timers who never work on these
days will be entitled to proportionately fewer days off than full-timers who
regularly work on these days. In these circumstances the disadvantage could be
removed by giving all part-timers pro rata entitlement to time off in lieu of
bank holidays according to the number of hours they work. However, the Part-time
Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 provide
protection only where any less favourable treatment is on the grounds that the
worker is part time. In McMenemy
v Capita Business Services Ltd [2007] IRLR 400 CS, an employee who worked Wednesday
to Friday claimed that his lack of entitlement to time off in lieu of Monday
bank holidays amounted to less favourable treatment, but the Court of Session
held that the cause of the difference in treatment was the fact that the
employee did not work on Mondays, not that he was part time.
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