Employee Rights
- To have employment protected during full and part-time periods of voluntary service in the armed forces, in the former case for a total period of 3 months and in the latter, for a total period of three weeks. Except with respect to any holiday entitlement which accrues, leave for the absence period is unpaid.
- To be entitled, in the case of full-time service, to an extended leave period, not exceeding seven days, when service ends. Leave may be further extended because of sickness or other reasonable cause.
- To have periods of absence on voluntary service treated, for rates of remuneration and annual holiday entitlement purposes, as continuous periods of employment.
- To take an annual holiday (except where the employee requests otherwise) at a time which is not a period of voluntary service or training.
- To take extended leave if deployed on matters of national interest (e.g. if sent to East Timor or Afghanistan on peace-keeping duties); and to have employment protected on the same basis as if the employee was taking parental leave.
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- To refuse to allow a casual, temporary or seasonal employee to return to employment if, having regard to general conditions applying in the industry concerned, his or her work would not normally have continued until the end of the leave of absence period.
- To treat, for the purposes of any paid (public) holiday occurring during a period of protected voluntary service or voluntary training, the employee concerned as no longer employed. (That is, public holidays do not have to be granted.)
- To apply to the Secretary of Labour for a postponement of an employee’s voluntary service or training on the ground that the employee’s absence will cause the employer undue hardship (although this need not be accepted).
- To receive from an employee 14 days’ notice of any impending absence from work for voluntary service or training purposes.
- To decline to grant leave of absence for extended periods of national service if doing so is impracticable because the employee occupies a “key position” (Note that the criteria for establishing that a position is a so-called key position and cannot be held open is the same as under the Parental Leave Act i.e. it is a very stringent test to satisfy).
To access the complete Act click here