asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce whether his attention has been drawn to complaints by building workers that, owing to the necessity of moving from employer to employer which frequently arises in the building trade, building workers are often deprived of holiday pay during the annual fortnight's holiday; and whether he will look into this problem with a view (a) to ascertaining the extent of the problem, and (b) to introducing some system comparable with that obtaining in Britain whereby the building worker is sure of getting his holiday pay.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Holiday Pay of Building Workers.
28.
Under Section 10 of the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1961, a worker who is in the employment of a person for at least a month is entitled, on termination of the employment, to pay in lieu of holidays at the rate of one sixth of his normal weekly wage for every month's employment during which he worked 135 hours or more. This, of course, applies to building workers as well as to others.
The position is, therefore, as the Act stands, that a building worker who is in fairly constant employment, even though he may have worked for different employers, should normally by the end of the year have received a substantial proportion of the holiday pay he would have received if he had been in continuous employment with the one employer.
In the circumstances, I do not think that any further action is called for on my part. If, however, employers and workers in the building industry were prepared to introduce a system of the kind referred to by the Deputy, I would, if joint representations were made to me, be prepared to consider how any such system might fit in with the requirements of the Act.