Holiday Pay

This information sheet tells about the holidays and holiday pay employers must give to their employees under the Labour Standards Code.

The Labour Standards Code gives employees who qualify five holidays with pay: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Canada Day, Labour Day, and Christmas Day. A separate law covers Remembrance Day; it is explained at the end of this information sheet.

Who Qualifies for Paid Holidays?

To have a day off with pay for these holidays, an employee must:

be entitled to receive pay for at least 15 of the 30 calendar days before the holiday
have worked her last scheduled shift or day before the holiday and the first scheduled shift or day after the holiday

First, during the 30 calendar days right before the holiday, the employee must be entitled to receive pay for 15 of those days. This does not mean that the employee must have worked 15 out of 30 days. The important words to remember are "entitled to receive pay." For example, if an employee is sick and the employer has a paid sick time policy, or if the employee is attending a course and is being paid wages for attending, the employee may still qualify for the paid holiday.

Second, the employee must have worked her last scheduled shift or day before the holiday and the first scheduled shift or day after the holiday. Again, the important word to remember is "scheduled." Many people believe this means that if the employee does not work the day after the holiday then the employee is not qualified to receive holiday pay. If the day is one when the employee is not scheduled to work, then she may still qualify for the paid holiday.

Exception

If an employer tells an employee not to report for work on his last scheduled work day immediately before the holiday, or the next scheduled work day after the holiday, then the employee is still entitled to receive holiday pay if he meets the first qualification.

Workers Who Are Not Covered

The following workers are not covered by the rules for holiday pay:

anyone who works under a collective agreement
certain farm workers
real estate and car salespeople
certain commissioned salespeople who make sales at locations other than at the employer's premises, except those on an established route
anyone who works on a fishing boat
anyone who works in the manufacturing or refining processes of the petrochemical industry
anyone employed in a private home by the householder to provide domestic service for a member of the employee's immediate family or for 24 hours or less per week

Paying an Employee for a Holiday

If an employee qualifies for the holiday and is given the day off, the employer must pay a regular day's pay for that holiday. If the employee's hours of work change from day to day, or if wages change from pay to pay, the employer could average hours or wages over 30 days to calculate what to pay the employee for the holiday.

For example, if an employee worked 20 of the 30 calendar days before the holiday for a total of 170 hours, the calculations would be as follows:
170 ÷ 20 = 8.5 average hours worked per shift.

If the holiday falls on an employee's regular day off, the employee is entitled to another day off with pay.

Calculating a Wage When the Employee Works on a Holiday

An employee who works on a holiday and who is qualified to be paid holiday pay is entitled to receive both of the following:

the amount the employee would have normally received for that day
one and a half times the employee's regular rate of wages for the number of hours worked on that holiday

When the Employee Works in a Continuous Operation

Employees who work in a continuous operation are paid for holidays in a different way.

A continuous operation is

any industrial establishment in which production continues without stopping
any service that runs trucks and other vehicles
any telephone or other communications service
any service or production in which employees work normally on Sundays or public holidays

In a continuous operation, the employer can pay for holidays worked in one of two ways:

according to the calculation already described
by paying straight time for the hours worked and giving the employee another day off with pay

Remembrance Day

An employee who works on Remembrance Day and who has worked on at least 15 of the 30 calendar days immediately before Remembrance Day may be entitled to receive a holiday with pay. That day with pay may be taken at the end of the employee's vacation or any other day the employee and employer may agree upon.