So much confusion surrounded the number of days workers will be entitled to as vacation leave this year, and the years to come.
The government tried to score cheap political points on this particular matter, but it ended up having to back-track and at the same time led to workers being disappointed.
This is because what former Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said during his budget speech in October differed from the government’s real intentions. Then, with its end of year statement regarding having public holidays falling on weekends added to vacation leave, workers were misled into thinking that they will have more holidays in 2021 and beyond.
But this is not so.
Until 2020, workers knew that they had 27 days of leave. When it was announced that public holidays falling on weekends would have been added to the number of leave days, many thought that they would have 27 plus three days, for a total of 30, given that 1 May, 15 August and 25 December fall on weekends this year.
But it later transpired that the basic number of leave days is not 27, as many were led to believe, but 24 (192 hours, to be exact, for people working 40-hour weeks). So, in all, workers will be getting 27 days of leave this year – 24, plus the three weekend holidays.
According to the website of the Director of Employment and Industrial Relations, the basic days of leave for the next years is 24, plus the three additional days for holidays falling on weekends (24 + 4 in 2022, 24 + 2 in 2023, and so on).
The confusion created by the government has irritated both unions and employers, as it could have easily been avoided if the government had been clear right from the start. As it happened, workers were misled into thinking that they would have extra days of leave, while employers were worried that the days of leave allotted were too high.
For the past years, during each budget it was announced that one extra day would be added to the leave entitlement to compensate for holidays falling on weekend. Every year, the government told us that it was giving back to workers what previous PN administrations had taken away from them. Every year, we heard government MPs banging on the parliament desks in support of the measure.
It was therefore comprehensible that many workers thought that their basic leave days had increased from 24 to 27. It was also understandable for them to then think that, from 2021, the holidays falling on weekends would have been added to 27, and not 24.
It is now clear that the government was taking workers for a ride when, every year in the budget speech, it said that an “extra day of leave” will be added. Now we know that it was not an extra day of leave, as the basic number of leave days has always remained 24.
And so, while there will be years with 28 days of leave, there will be others with 26, which is fewer days than what workers enjoyed in 2020.