Employment Law – Treatment of additional Public Holidays

Employment Law – Treatment of additional Public Holidays

Employers honour known national holidays. But what is the requirement when the government announces additional holidays, often at short notice? These can impact a company’s operational plans. The Thai-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce has raised the issue of additional ad-hoc holidays declared by the government with the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce for clarification. The below information clarifies obligations for private companies in relation to the government’s announcement of such holidays.

Employers are required to honour a minimum of 13 days of national holiday per year, including Labour Day (1 May) and publish these. There is no hard obligation to support additional holidays and some flexibility applies to additional days. In practice, companies tend to offer 15 or 16 days. (These are separate from annual holidays). Relevant laws are the Labour Protection Act (directly relevant) and the Labour Relations Act (less directly relevant).

Also, where the public holiday is not taken due to such essential tasks, a substitute needs to be agreed upon. How they can be agreed upon may be a collective bargaining process that the Labour Relations Act covers. Obviously, not every employee would take the same days when critical tasks are involved. How much agreements may be done can bring in some complexity where there are Employee Councils or Employee Welfare councils. Companies with a minimum prescribed employee numbers must have an employee council (referred to as ‘employee committee’ and ‘welfare committee’ in the Labour Relations Act). How such agreements are reached is beyond the scope of this Memo, which is about public holidays. Where the number of employees is low such that no Council is relevant, individual agreements need to be reached with the employee. Thus in these cases of substitute days, employee consent is needed. (Again, not so for public holidays, assuming the base requirements of 13 days are met, as the Supreme Court decision stated).

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