Labour and Employment Law Blog

In our June 28 blog post, we wrote about calculating holidays and holiday pay for employees working in British Columbia who are entitled to holiday pay. With Labour Day approaching, we thought we would revisit the topic.  

Did you know that there are many employees who do not have any entitlement to statutory holidays under the British Columbia Employment Standards Act? Employees who are not entitled to any holidays under the Act include:

• Any employee who has not been employed for at least 30 calendar days
• Any employee who has not worked or earned wages on at least 15 of the 30 calendar days prior to the statutory holiday (unless they have worked under an averaging agreement during that time)
• Managers
• Commissioned car and truck salespeople and silviculture workers, provided they receive 4% of their gross earnings for the pay period on each pay cheque
• Commissioned recreational vehicle or camper salespeople
• Farm workers
• Fishers
• High technology professionals (note there is a very specific definition as to what constitutes a high technology professional)
• Architects, CPAs, lawyers and articled students, dentists, professional engineers, insurance agents and adjusters, land surveyors and articled pupils, doctors, chiropractors, naturopaths, optometrists, podiatrists, real estate agents, brokers, veterinarians, and professional foresters, provided, in all cases, that they are employed in their professional capacity
• Students working at a secondary school where they are enrolled
• Any employee covered by a collective agreement, if the collective agreement has some provision regarding statutory holidays

Any entitlement that these employees may have to statutory holidays must come from either a collective agreement or from the specific provisions in their own contract of employment.

For more information, please contact Robert Sider or Jim Boyle or a member of our Labour and Employment Law Group.