Your rights: Shift swaps lead to holiday pay chaos

Q. I am one of a number of operations managers working in a continuous data management business. We work on rostered shifts. We are required to work 40 hours a week, over five days. We have a rotating roster so that we sometimes work Monday to Friday, sometimes Tuesday to Saturday, and sometimes Wednesday to Sunday. Sometimes we informally swap shifts. I am salaried.

For Christmas and New Year, I was rostered to work Tuesday to Saturday. I didn't work either of the Saturdays because I swapped shifts. I was paid my normal salary for those weeks. I also worked on the Monday following New Year's Day, because of a shift swap.

My employer says that because I had the Saturday off and was paid my normal salary, I had the public holiday on Saturday. And the company will only pay me my normal salary for the Monday I worked, and won't give me an alternative day off.

I thought that the public holidays for Christmas and New Year transfer to the following Mondays and Tuesdays if they fall on a Saturday or Sunday.

I also thought that you are supposed to get time and a half and an alternative day off, if you work on a public holiday. Is what my employer is doing correct?

A. Your situation is complex. Neither you nor your employer have done yourselves any favours by the way in which you are working.

The basic concept is that Christmas and New Year Public Holidays that fall on Saturdays or Sundays transfer to the following Monday or Tuesday if the Saturday or Sunday is not a normal working day for staff concerned.

Since you were rostered to work on the Saturdays, those days were probably "working days" for you.

If you hadn't usually worked on Saturdays over the previous two months, you could argue that Saturday was not a normal working day. If you regularly worked on Saturdays in the couple of months before Christmas/New Year, Saturday would be regarded as a working day, so that public holiday would not transfer. You took the day off by swapping shifts and were paid for a full week's work. So, your employer has a good basis to say that you observed the public holiday.

For the work on the following Monday, your entitlements depend on whether Mondays were at the time normal working days for you and on whether the public holiday transferred from the Saturday. If you were rostered to work on the Monday, it will likely be seen as a normal working day.

Employees who work on a statutory holiday that falls on a normal working day for them are paid the portion of their "relevant daily pay" that relates to the hours they work, plus 50 per cent (time and a half). They are also entitled to an alternative holiday on full pay.

Assuming Monday was a normal working day for you and the holiday transferred from Saturday this is what you would get. You would get your normal salary for the day plus 50 per cent of the portion of "relevant daily pay" that relates to the hours you worked.

If the Saturday was a normal working day for you, and you observed the holiday on that day, so the public holiday did not transfer, work on the Monday would be paid only at ordinary pay.

If the public holiday did transfer from Saturday and if Monday, according to your previous work patterns or the roster, was not a normal working day for you, you would be paid time and a half for working the Monday. However, you would not be entitled to an alternative day off.

Whether public holidays transfer, and what you get paid, depend on whether the relevant days are "working days" for you. You and your employer should try to reach agreement about this. If you cannot reach agreement, a Labour Inspector can decide the question.

Only people whose normal working days do not include any of the days on which the public holidays fall, or to which the holidays are transferred, who have no entitlements.