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Giving sick workers a break

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05 June 2008 / Charles Pigott
Issue: 7324 / Categories: Features , Legal services , Terms&conditions , Employment
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Employers may need to ensure that workers who are off sick do not miss out on their holiday entitlement, says Charles Pigott

Advocate general Verica Trstenjak delivered her opinions in two references about the interpretation of the Working Time Directive 2003/88 (WTD) on 24 January 2008. The British reference (now known as Stringer and others v Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs C-520/06) is essentially about two questions: whether a worker can re-designate a period of sick leave as holiday leave, and how payment in lieu of untaken holiday leave should be calculated for workers who have been off sick for all or part of the holiday year. The German reference (Schultz-Hoff v Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund C-350/06) was made before Stringer but takes the questions it poses to their logical conclusion by tackling the question of whether a sick worker should be allowed to carry forward unused holiday leave.

At the heart of the two references are the brief provisions of Art 7 of the WTD dealing with

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