Under EU law all workers are entitled to at least four weeks holiday each year, but employers can pay workers in lieu of accrued but untaken holiday when an employee leaves, and it happens all the time. So what happens to that holiday entitlement if someone dies whilst an employee, can the employer write it off?
Recently the Court of Justice of the European Union was asked that very question and ruled that the right to annual holiday is an essential principle of EU social law. It concluded that there is nothing in law to say that the right to holiday pay disappears on an employees death, so the employer had to pay any holiday in lieu to his wife.
What this means is that an employer must still accrue the cost of the holiday entitlement and ensure they have the cash to pay it.
