Work on a public holiday

What it means

Work on a public holiday earns the wage actually achieved plus a wage supplement of at least one hundred per cent of the employee’s average earnings. Instead of the supplement the employer may agree compensatory time off with them.

A holiday falling on a normal working day that is not worked counts as worked for anyone on a monthly salary, so the pay is not reduced. An hourly paid employee receives wage compensation instead, because the holiday cost them pay, and that is a different entitlement from the supplement.

A public holiday is not the same as Saturday or Sunday work, which earns its own supplement derived from the minimum wage rather than from average earnings. Only the rest days set by law count as holidays; commemorative days are ordinary working days and create no supplement.

How it works in practice

Hours worked on a holiday are recorded separately in the attendance records, because they are calculated from a different base than ordinary pay. If the holiday falls at night or at a weekend the supplements do not absorb each other: the night work supplement is added to the holiday one.

The Labour Code also bans retail work on certain days, so for a shop the question is not the size of the supplement but whether it may open at all. Under agreements outside employment the supplement is derived from a different base than for employees.

In round-the-clock operations such as a hotel or a security service, we ask for the shift plan for the holidays before the year ends. In the attendance records we then check that holiday hours are kept apart from weekend and night hours, because each group is calculated from a different base.

What to watch out for

Compensatory time off agreed instead of the supplement often goes untaken and is forgotten. If the employer fails to grant it within the statutory period, the supplement has to be paid retrospectively together with the levies, in a month when the original period is long closed.

Average earnings are set from the previous calendar quarter and change at the start of every quarter. If the payroll software calculates the supplement from an outdated average, the employee gets less than is due, and the top-up with its levies is then corrected retrospectively in the payroll record across several months.