It is midsummer, so a lot of workers are on vacation leave. However, there are many situations when the leave needs to be split into parts or its term to be postponed. How to do it – in the following.
An annual leave at the request of an employee may be split into parts of any duration, provided that the principal continuous part thereof is not less than 14 calendar days. This part of the leave should not be necessarily first (para. 1 of Art. 12 of the Law of Ukraine “On Leaves” of 15.11.1996 No. 504/96-BP, hereinafter – Law No. 504, letter of the Ministry of Social Policy of 05.07.13, No. 290/13/116-13).
The final decision on an employee’s leave should be taken by the employer. Therefore, in order to prevent the loss of working time, taking into account the production circumstances, he/she can not to agree to split the leave as the employee wants to. Also, the employer may propose their conditions for splitting the annual leave or refuse to split it at all (the letter of the Ministry of Labor of 13.05.10 No. 140/13/116-10).
As a rule, an unused part of the annual leave should be provided to the employee by the end of the working year, but not later than 12 months after the end of the working year for which the leave is granted.
Consequently, the possibility of splitting the employee’s leave is entirely within the competence of the employer. An employee can only apply for the leave and express his/her desire for the leave splitting and time. And the employer, in turn, – either goes to meet or refuse it. If the employer agrees, an order is issued for the postponing the leave based on an employee’s application. An employer should postpone an annual leave on the basis of an employee application for another period or continue (para. 2 of Art. 11 of Law No. 504) in the following cases:
- in the case of temporary incapacity of an employee, certified in accordance with the established procedure;
- in the case of an employee performing public or civic duties, if, according to the law, he/she is liable to release from the main job with salary preservation;
- in the event of a period of maternity leave;
- if the annual leave coincides with training.
