ADV days: rights and obligations | Legal aid centre

Questioner

My employer asks me to take my 15 ADV days in the months Jan/Feb/March/Sep/Oct/Nov and to submit these 15 dates before December 1 so that the annual schedule can be drawn up. Until now, ADV hours were treated in the same way as regular holiday hours, except that the ADV hours had to be taken before the end of the year. Our company regulations only state: 'Employees in the day shift and employees in the two- and three-shift system are entitled to 120 hours of reduced working hours. These hours are included in the annual schedules'. Do I have to cooperate with this/can the employer ask for this?

Lawyer

Unlike vacation days, the right to adv days is not regulated by law. Agreements on this can be found in the collective labor agreement. Does your company not have a collective labor agreement? Even then, it is possible to make agreements about adv. The agreements include taking adv days. For example, your collective labor agreement may state that the days can be taken freely. The agreement may also be that your employer processes them in the work schedule. Sometimes you can't carry over adv days to the next year. If you don't take the days, you lose them. What is important is the agreements that the employee and employer make. What was the policy up until now? That policy cannot simply be changed unilaterally.

Questioner

Thank you for your response. The policy up until now was that employees could take ADV days themselves, they were treated as vacation days. However, the employee had to make sure that they were taken before the end of the year. I am now wondering whether an employee can be obliged to take these ADV days in a defined period, i.e. Jan/Feb/March and Sept/Oct/Nov. The employer's rationale is that these are the quiet months; employees are desperately needed in other months.