Changes to holiday arrangements in the 2007 Agricultural Wages Order for England & Wales will lead to significant labour cost increases and confusion across the sector, David Camp, director of the Association of Labour Providers, has warned.

“Essentially what has changed is that separate entitlements to public holiday and annual holiday have been combined into a new ‘total annual holiday entitlement’ for all workers,” said Camp.

He said this raises three issues. First, the AWB has added eight days public holiday to all workers’ holiday entitlement irrespective of whether they work one or seven days a week. “This has the effect that an agricultural worker working one day a week now has the benefit of 14 days holiday a year i.e. over 25 per cent of working time, a worker working two days a week has the equivalent of nine weeks holiday a year, whereas a five- day a week worker sees no change remaining at 6.2 weeks paid holiday a year,” said Camp. “The number of weeks holiday a worker is entitled to varies dependent on the number of days a week they work, the fewer the days, the greater the proportion of weeks holidays.”

Second, previous entitlement to paid public holiday leave only occurred where a public holiday fell on a day when the worker was normally required to work under their contract of employment. Many agency workers on zero-hours contracts were therefore not entitled to be paid public holiday. “However, the new “total annual holiday entitlement” applies to all workers including agency workers and this alone will require labour providers, who have previously not charged for public holidays to raise labour costs by 3.5 per cent,” said Camp.

Third, there Camp highlights that there is no clarity over how to calculate holiday entitlement for those workers who have no fixed hours or days of work, predominantly agency workers, which could result in disputes and disagreements between labour providers and users.

“The Agricultural Wages Order has failed to keep pace with the changing nature of the workplace, particularly with regard to temporary workers supplied by labour providers,” said Camp. “It should provide clarity and concise guidance; however it merely serves to confuse labour providers and labour users alike. The time has come for the AWB to take account of the vast numbers of temporary agency workers working in the sector and produce an order that helps not hinders the industry.”

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