Paying Vacation to Casual and Part Time Employees
Vacation allowance under The Employment Standards Code entitles employees to both vacation time and pay. It is a common misconception that there are different rules for “part time” or “casual” employees than for employees who work “full time”.
For all employees, the amount of vacation time depends on how long the employee has worked for the same employer. Employees who have worked for longer than one year, but less than five, are entitled to 2 weeks of vacation. After five years, employees are entitled to 3 weeks of vacation.
Calculating vacation pay also uses the same formula regardless of whether an employee works full-time, part-time or casual. Vacation pay is based on a percentage of earned wages. The vacation wages of an employee who earns less than another employee will be lower for this reason.
For example, Julia works at a grocery store. She works 32 hours in one week at $11.00 per hour. In one week, she earns $11.00/hour x 32 hours/week = $352.00/week. As vacation wages, she receives 4% of this gross amount: $352.00 X .04 (%) = $14.08
Margaret works at the same store, earning the same wage, but instead, works 40 hours in one week. In one week, she earns $11.00/hour x 40 hours/week = $440.00/week. Again, an additional 4% of this gross amount is earned as vacation pay. $440.00 x .04 (%) = $17.60
Margaret earns more vacation pay than Julia, because she earns more money each week.
For the first 4 years of employment, employees earn at minimum, 4% of their regular wages as vacation pay. After 5 consecutive years, they earn 6% of their regular wages at minimum.
For more information on Vacation time and pay, please visit our fact sheet at https://www.gov.mb.ca/labour/standards/doc,vacations,factsheet.html.
The following cases are based on actual investigations conducted by Employment Standards.
- An employer was unaware that casual employees are entitled to vacation wages. Employment Standards educated the employer on the requirements for both vacation time and pay, and the employer immediately complied with the rules.
- As a result of an anonymous letter Employment Standards found that an employer in the cleaning industry was not paying vacation pay. Payroll records were pulled for this company and confirmed this information. We corrected this violation through education.
- Employees of a home/apartment maintenance business were receiving vacation pay but not vacation time. We reviewed the rules with the employer and also explained that the entitlement increases after 5 consecutive years of employment with the same employer.
- Long-service, seasonal employees were only receiving 2 weeks of vacation at 4% of their gross wages as vacation pay instead of 3 weeks of vacation at 6% of their gross wages as vacation pay. Employer’s can choose to give employees more vacation time or pay than what is set out in the Code, but cannot give employees less than the minimum requirement.
