Annual leave is the time prescribed by law for the employee to rest from his labor duties. Moreover, for this period, the employee is guaranteed payment and storage space. But there is another type of vacation, which is often called “without maintenance” or “at one’s expense”. It is provided at the request of the employee, if the latter needs to be released from work, and regular leave has already been used. However, sometimes in practice you may encounter administrative leave at the initiative of the employer. What payment is due to employees in this case? Is it legal at all to send personnel on such a vacation? Consider all the possible options.
Administrative leave - what is it?
It is customary to call unpaid leave administrative, but there is no such wording in the Labor Code. Article 128 reveals the concept of leave without pay - it is what they call administrative people.
The beginning and duration of such leave must be agreed between the parties. It is provided at the request of the employee, as confirmed by the relevant statement. Sometimes the question arises: what is the maximum period of administrative leave? The answer is: there are no restrictions on this subject. The resolution of this issue is at the discretion of the parties. Thus, the duration of leave without maintenance may be such as agreed upon by the employer and employee. Moreover, the latter retains his position for the entire time of such a vacation.
What is the level of legality of administrative leave by the employer?
From the foregoing, it follows that unpaid leave begins solely on the initiative of the employee. The company does not have the right to force its employees to write a vacation application without maintenance. In practice, in difficult times, organizations sometimes resort to this, taking advantage of the fact that employees do not know their rights. At the same time, administrative leave on the initiative of the employer is justified by the need to reduce costs, including labor costs, so that the company does not go broke at all. In fact, people are confronted with the fact and offered to choose the lesser of two evils.
Meanwhile, such actions of the employer are considered a violation of legal norms and are punishable by a fine. If the company sends employees on vacation without payment, then if this violation is detected, the amount of the fine will be from 30 thousand to 50 thousand rubles. An official or individual entrepreneur will be punished with a fine of 1-5 thousand rubles. Moreover, a fine may be imposed not for the offense as a whole, but for each employee sent on unpaid leave.
Why the law does not allow sending employees on forced leave?
Above we found out that the employee on administrative leave (and on the initiative of the employer as well) does not receive remuneration. But there are other disadvantages that result from unpaid leave. Firstly, if an employee becomes ill during this period, then disability benefits (sick leave) will not be paid to him. Secondly, the experience that is used to calculate annual leave includes only 14 administrative days. If leave without maintenance lasts longer, the rest of this period will not be taken into account when calculating length of service.
When can an employer go on vacation?
So, the labor law does not know such a wording as administrative leave at the initiative of the employer. In other words, you can only send an employee on paid annual leave. Moreover, there are situations when the employer is obliged to do this - if the employee has not rested for more than two years. The rules require the employee to be included in the vacation schedule and notify him 2 weeks in advance of the upcoming vacation. However, practice shows that this requirement of the law is far from always fulfilled and individual workers do not go on vacation for years.
But administrative leave on the initiative of the employer is out of the question in any case. If a company has economic difficulties, the law provides for other forms of reduction in labor costs — simple for production needs, a reduction in the number of employees, and in some cases a decrease in the duration of work. However, all of them involve payments to employees.
Simple no-fault worker
A legitimate alternative to administrative leave at the initiative of the employer can be simple, that is, stopping the work process. For the employee, this is a much more profitable option, since he is entitled to 2/3 of the average salary, if simple is initiated by the employer. If the suspension of work is caused by the influence of third parties or external forces, that is, it does not depend on either the employer or the employee, it is paid based on 2/3 of the rate or salary in terms of the downtime.
In any case, the employee will not remain completely without income, unless, of course, he is guilty of idle time. In this case, for obvious reasons, payment is not supposed to him.
A downtime should be framed by the order of the employer, in which he indicates the following parameters:
- in relation to which of the employees this measure is introduced (all employees or some may "stand idle");
- What is the downtime
- what is the amount of payment during this period;
- whether to come to work.
Shortened work day or week
The introduction of part-time work at the enterprise is another alternative to administrative leave on the initiative of the employer. The maximum period for which you can reduce working time is 6 months. In addition, this is only possible under certain conditions. Such a change in the work schedule should be associated, for example, with the introduction of new equipment or technology or with the reorganization of the enterprise structure. Another condition - such innovations can lead to the fact that many workers will have to be fired.
An example is the introduction in production of an automated line that will replace the manual labor of five people. At the same time, two employees will be able to serve it. In this case, it is more expedient to reduce the working time of all employees than to violate labor laws and send them on administrative leave at the initiative of the employer. Part-time wages are calculated in proportion to the hours worked, which allows the company to reduce employee costs.
Shortened working hours can be entered in different ways. You can shorten a five-day week and make workers, for example, 2-3 days. And you can reduce it by several hours every working day.
Employees for whom it is planned to introduce such a regime must be notified in writing of this at least 2 months in advance. Note that they are not required to agree to new working conditions. In this case, the employer must offer them a similar position, including a lower one. If there are no such vacancies or the employee does not agree to them, then the employment relationship is terminated.
Abbreviation
Employers are doing their best to avoid staff reductions. It is understandable, because the company is not at all profitable. However, sometimes there is no other option. The employee, on the contrary, is preferable to such an option of dismissal, since he, in addition to full settlement, should receive a severance pay in the amount of his average earnings. In addition, if an employee does not find a job within a month, he is supposed to pay the same amount of benefits again.
To summarize
So, we found that administrative leave at the initiative of the employer is an absolute legal nonsense. There are some other mechanisms that will help to somewhat reduce the costs of employee benefits.
However, companies are much more profitable from an economic point of view to send employees on vacation without maintenance, than to pay most of the salary with a downtime or the allowance due to the reduction of staff. Therefore, they often go for such dubious measures. Nevertheless, employers should not forget about the possibility of receiving an impressive fine for this violation.