The Peninsula Employment Law Dictionary – ‘Y and Z’
We all know that employment law is a minefield. Sometimes it may feel like there is legislation for everything and often there are lots of ‘buzz-words’ specific to employment law being bounced around. You wouldn’t be on your own if you thought that employment law is like another language! In an effort to help employers wade through these buzz-words and parts of legislation, we at Peninsula have created our very own Employment Law Dictionary! It’s simple, concise and easy to understand. Each month we represent a letter of the alphabet and associate a few words in employment law with that letter.
‘Y’
Young Persons Working - The Protection of Young Persons (Employment) Act, 1996 aims to protect the health of young workers to ensure that a young person’s education is not put at risk due to working during the school year.
The Act sets out minimum age limits for employment, rest intervals and maximum working hours for employees who are under the age of 18. It also prohibits the employment of under-18s on late-night work, and also gives a definition of a “child” as meaning any person under the age of 16, whilst a young person is defined as a person who is between 16 and 18 years of age.
The maximum working week for young persons aged 16 and 17 is 40 hours with a maximum of 8 hours a day, whereas over the age of 18 the maximum working week is an average of 48 hours per week over a four month period. Under the Act, young persons are only permitted to work between 6am and 10pm. Any exceptions to this rule must be provided by regulation which in the case of licensed premises allows them to work up until 11pm on a day that does not precede a school day when the young person is attending school.
Rates of pay also differ for young persons under the age of 18, with the National Minimum Wage for young persons being 70% of the current full rate for those over the age of 18 which is currently €8.65.
‘Z’
Zero-Hours Contracts - Zero-Hours contracts are used in circumstances where an employee is contractually obliged to be available to work for an employer in a week for;
a) a certain number of hours; or
b) as and when the employer requires them to do so; or
c) both a certain number of hours and otherwise as and when the employer requires them to do so.
Employees on zero-hours contracts are protected by the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 but this does not apply to casual employment. What differentiates Zero-Hours contracts from regular casual workers contracts is that with Zero-Hours contracts the employee is entitled to receive remuneration even if they do not work for the employer at all in a particular week or if they work less than the number of hours provided for in their terms and conditions. The Act requires that an employee under a zero-hours contract who works less than 25% of their hours in any week should be compensated. The level of compensation depends on whether the employee got only some work or no work at all. If the employee got no work, then the compensation should either be 25% of the possible available hours or for 15 hours, whichever is less. If the employee got some work, they should be compensated to bring them up to 25% of the possible available hours.
