Tribunal confirms workers' rights to paid holidays

In a recent case the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has confirmed that all workers, including those with contracts just to provide their services, have the right to a minimum of four weeks' paid holidays a year.

This means that only the genuinely self-employed, in business on their own account, are excluded from the right to paid holidays.

In this case the EAT had to decide whether or not builders paid by the amount of work they did, rather than by the hours they worked or when they worked, had the right to paid holidays.

Their contracts did not stipulate any fixed hours. They supplied some of their own tools and were free to work elsewhere (although in practice they did not). The builders were also responsible for their own National Insurance payments.

At the same time they were paid an amount laid down by the contractor, they could be ordered to rectify any defective work they had done and were not working on the basis of either a profit or a loss.

The Tribunal had no hesitation in ruling that they were not genuinely self employed. There was an employment relationship between them and the employer giving them the right to paid holidays.

* Redrow Homes v Wright and others EAT/337/02