Longer Holidays in the UK
It seems that in October 2007 there will be further changes in employment law which will mean that British workers’ overall holiday entitlement will increase from 20 days to 24, rising to 28 days by autumn 2008. Surprisingly, although we in the UK have less holiday entitlement than our European neighbours it seems that we are known for having the longest hours and the lowest productivity in Europe.
As I understand it, the main reason for the change is in 1999 the UK did as little as they could to comply with the European directive. This meant that although the law said that employees were entitled to four weeks holiday, many employers included public holidays in that entitlement. This new legislation means that each employee is entitled to four full weeks plus public holidays.
Whichever way we look at it, this seems an awful lot of holiday to me, being one of the self-employed, but in fact we lag far behind other European Countries such as France which gives workers 36 days, Italy with 32, and Germany with 29.
Peter