Licensing@aol.com
Holiday for a new worker
Q I started work in a pub in October
and I work a five-and-a-half-day week. I asked the owner about holidays and he said we would sort them out after the Christmas and New Year period "when I had qualified". Does this mean I don't get any holiday entitlement for the first six months or so? What can I do?
AThe law used to set a qualifying period for holiday entitlement, but since 2001 all workers can start counting up their holidays from day one.
The Government had to change the law in a hurry after a European Court ruling that it was acting unlawfully in setting a 13-week qualifying period. What this means in practice is that you start building up your paid holiday days from the end of the first month of employment. This is called "accrual".
As you work five and a half days a week, you are eventually entitled to 26.4 days of paid holiday a year, to be completely exact. This is because holiday entitlement has been extended for all workers from this year. It works out at just over two days a month, which you build up in your first year of employment.
Effectively, it means for you that after the first three months you will have accumulated enough holiday entitlement to take a week off. But you must give notice, and it is up to you to agree with your employer how this should be done. You must both act reasonably in reaching agreement, as you don't really want to fall out at this early stage. But it may be that the owner is not quite up to date on the law.
If you do not reach any sort of agreement, you can take the matter up with ACAS, the arbitration service: its contact details are on the web and in the phone book. But I hope this will not be necessary.
Old films on pub TV
QI have recently been approached by one of my customers offering old feature films which have been transferred to DVD which he suggests I play on the pub TV on quiet evenings when there is often nothing worth watching. I do not have a big screen, but the TV is placed so that customers can watch it. Is this OK?
ANo, it isn't. You must be very careful about buying feature films from an unknown source. It could land you in legal trouble.
It is true that the renting of a DVD direct to the holder of a premises licence is not,
in itself, illegal.
But the playing of most DVDs on the pub's own equipment, for the entertainment of customers, would undoubtedly cause legal problems, especially if these are "pirate" copies.
Although, in the main, domestic use of DVDs is not considered unlawful, the public performance of the material is usually specifically prohibited by the copyright holders of feature films. This means that if these films are played in the pub, there may be an infringement of that copyright and an offence committed under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act.
This depends on the age of the material and on whether there is anyone to mount
a prosecution.
The major problem concerns the requirement for change in the premises licence before any exhibition of moving pictures other than live television is shown. This rule applies under the new law, whatever the screen size. You would need to apply to the licensing authority for a variation, which will cost you at least a couple of hundred pounds and may make the whole idea a non-starter.
