Recently, the Government published a bill to repeal and replace the Holidays with Pay Act of 1952. This new bill is not vastly different from the law that is already in force. In fact it essentially re-enacts the old legislation with two major differences. Firstly, the penalty for an employer who breaches the Act will be increased from a fine of $100 or imprisonment for three months or both to a fine of $10,000 or imprisonment for one year or both. Secondly, at clause 3(5) it strips away the protection that workers had from unscrupulous employers who would force them to break up their annual holiday to the extent that it rendered the holiday meaningless.
Section 3(4) of the Holidays with Pay Act states:
The annual holiday shall be given and taken in one period or, if the employer and employee so agree, in two separate periods and not otherwise.
The employer is in the dominant position in the employer/employee relationship, and can therefore exert pressure on an employee to agree to break up his holiday. The present law affords the worker some measure of protection in this regard, since an employee could not legally agree to break the law.
The new clause 3(5) resembles the old provisions with one glaring addition. It goes on to say that the annual holiday may be taken in such periods as may be agreed which is a backward anti worker step. When the original legislation was passed in 1952, it provided that employees were entitled to two weeks holiday with pay. Several employers circumvented the intent of the law by giving their employees holidays two days at a time. The Act was amended in 1961to outlaw this abuse. The abuse of the worker is now about to be reintroduced by legislation.
I remember as a boy reading Oliver Twist where one of the characters said, “If that is the law: the law is a ass, a idiot!” Well here is another example where the new bill re-enacts a provision from the 1952 Act. Clause 14(1) of the new bill states:
A person who was employed on January 1st, 1952 and to whom this Act is applicable shall be treated as if his year of employment had begun on 1st of January, 1952.
Here we have Ministers being misled into bringing silly legislation to Parliament. When this bill was being drafted didn’t anyone realize that the person would have been working for over sixty years with the same employer?
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