The Scottish government announced that an additional, one-off, bank holiday is to take place on Monday 15 July. The official Bank Holiday Proclamation explains that this is to mark the achievement of Scotland's men's football team qualifying for the World Cup finals for the first time in 28 years. This holiday will be recognised by some, but not all, public sector employers.
If they haven't done so already, employers should be taking steps to confirm whether or not they intend to give workers the extra day off as soon as possible, to ensure that expectations are managed. Workers do not have a statutory right to the holiday or to time off on specific public holidays. Workers may though have a contractual right to the holiday if, for example, their contract of employment refers to a right to "all public holidays". They would not though have a right to the extra holiday if the contract states that employees are entitled to specific bank holidays or if the contract refers to a set number of bank holidays that are recognised.
Where there is no entitlement to the day off, employers should ensure that multiple requests for the day off are dealt with in compliance with their normal procedures, and in a non-discriminatory way. Another issue that employers may need to grapple with is employees who are not entitled to the time off calling in sick, with past tournaments seeing workplace absence spikes. If employers think that this may be an issue for their organisation, they may want to issue a reminder nearer the time reminding employees of their holiday request processes and that unauthorised absences, including false sickness, will be treated as conduct issues.
It is, of course, open to an employer to allow the 15th of July off on a discretionary basis even if there is no contractual entitlement to the day off. We are not though aware of a significant number of employers in the private sector doing this. It may be that with late kick offs throughout this World Cup, flexibility is the way forward here and employers may want to consider allowing employees, for example, to start later than usual provided that the time is made up.
