tarkadoc

Hi,

my offer seems to count weekend days against my leave entitlement (30 days). The recruiter says all employees have the same & can't be changed. Its a significant difference if weekends aren't counted- Does that sound right?

from the contract:
'number of days leave will be calculated as continuous calendar days form the first scheduled workday to the last calendar day.'

weasel decentral

Pretty normal in my experience to count the weekends.

In construction most guys have this, you wind up leaving on a Thursday night, but declaring the leave period from Saturday (as Friday is off) in order to minimize the leave used.

scrubbedexpat141

**** that.

weasel decentral

Yeah true but mostly the offers were for 45 days leave (including weekends) so it was still marginally ahead of 30 days without weekends.

I thought it was fairly prevalent with most of the ME contractors?

scrubbedexpat141

That's fair enough.

Not sure to be honest. Most of my work has been with consultancies, although with the contractors I did deal with I don't remember seeing it much. But perhaps like schooling, house, utilities etc provided it may have died out / changed.

mission

that's harsh.....and from what i know it definitely isn't the 'norm'....my company is in the freezone and all our employees holiday entitlement is 30 days excluding weekends - that's JAFZA's rule, as far as we know.

mission

apologies i stand corrected - just been told the 30 days DOES include weekends. Although for me personally my UK employment contract overrides the JAFZA one and so for me weekends are not included.

carcajou

It does include weekends though organisations have the discretion, as mine did, to not count weekends in leave calculations as an added benefit to employees.

sicklyman

yep standard stuff. Based on US military policies, I heard.

scot47

Was standard when I worked for Saudi Arabian Airlines. Not much you can do about it. What do you propose ? Raising it with the union ? Good luck on that one !

tarkadoc

thanks all,
fair enough- doesn't sound like I'll have much joy fighting that one

nottmbantam

Yeah, confirmed here for KSA, 30 calendar days , not working days.

As Weasel points out, you try to manipulate as best you can.

Johnnyboy11

I heard it was based on the Khafala system. You hadn't served your master whilst on leave, so hadn't earned your weekend off.

You can get round it by taking 5 days off at a time, Sunday to Thursday, so technically you are back in service on Friday.

9x5 days = 45 days leave, plus the two Eids, that's potentially 11 trips out of Qatar for me

IKnowNothing

That's how Emirates used to calculate leave too, dunno whether they still do.

Taz786

This is the same case in my new company. They offer 35 calendar days holidays. However, if you take weekly holidays, on the system its calculated 5 days and therefore it equates to 7 weeks.

I personally prefer shorter holidays so don't mind it.