Friend has been allowed to take leave at a time when it wouldn't normally be granted.
It has happened at the same time every year for the past ten years. It allows him to go snowboarding and he makes up the time in holidays when no one else is about. (Actually means he can do the jobs there's never enough time to do because people are always asking for extras).
We reckon that although it's not in his contract it is established.
What is the phrase used that covers this. I'm sure there's wording but damned if I can remember.
Thanks
Established custom and practice?
Good luck with that fight. I'm going to bet there's a new manager or new HR bod and this will be stopped fight or not.
I’m not sure that it’s custom and practice if it’s been made clear that it’s an exception rather than the rule, even if it’s happened many times.
Implicit contract terms?
custom and practice?
I had a colleague once that loved to quote that when we were having discussions about local work agreements outside our company contracts.
Except the first time he'd heard it, he obviously heard it wrong so kept banging on about customer practice, so his argument lost a lot of impact. 😁
The phrase is custom & practice. I’m not sure that it can necessarily apply to just one individual though. I think it has to be ‘widespread’ and ‘generally understood’ to be the case.
I’m not sure that it can necessarily apply to just one individual though.
I'm not sure as it can be applied to holidays, either.
Technically, an employer doesn't have to give you a choice of when to take holidays. They could quite easily say "ok Dave, you're taking March off, Sarah's got April, that's your leave sorted for another year." Of course, (almost?) no-one would do this as aside from it not being great for morale there's little point. But being allowed to request specific holiday dates is a courtesy, not contractual.
AIUI, YMMV, IANAHR.
We reckon that although it's not in his contract it is established.
Generally speaking, it does. But: The employer can still change the contract to explicitly stop it (after consultation period), check the wording, if the employer says something along the lines of "we retain the right to do this at our sole discretion" then it's not established, or if it's been inconsistently applied to the whole workforce or some years it doesn't get used, even sometimes if employees are not aware of it, or don't expect it to happen, it can sometimes not be custom and practice.
But if it suits both empr and empee then there's no good reason to change it.
