Holidays: can an employee be called back to work?

It is a bugbear, which occasionally peeps: “Look, if there is a need, they can call you back from vacation“. But is it really possible? And, if it ever happens, are there any refunds? Then can you make up for lost time or is it just lost?

We know well that employees can make a request for leave, but it is then up to the employer to give the definitive ok, based on company needs. Therefore, given that the employee always has the right to take holidays during the year, it is however true that the employer can decide when to have them done and possibly, yes, can request a early return but only if there are specific company needs and if this possibility is foreseen by the collective agreement or by an agreement between employer and employee.

You can already guess the question: can we refuse? “Only in the absence of an obligation deriving from individual or collective agreements and the conditions established for the legitimacy of the aforementioned early warning, the refusal of the worker can be considered legitimate”, explains the lawyer Emanuela Nespoli, partner of the Law Firm Toffoletto De Luca Tamajo and Associates, «However, it should be borne in mind that most national collective agreements provide for the obligation of the worker to return to work, obviously always subject to certain conditions ”. In the event that the worker should return, he still has the right to obtain the treatments provided for in the contract collective reference: in the case of return, according to the national collective agreement of the health sector, for example, the reimbursement of documented expenses for the return trip and for the return trip to the place of vacation, the indemnity must be recognized for the duration of the aforementioned trips and the reimbursement of documented expenses for the period of vacation not taken.

It is true that today the boundaries between holidays and work are increasingly blurred: it will surely have happened to you that they called you on your smartphone while you were by the sea. Well, in this case are you obliged to answer and still be available at all times? According to the general rules and in line with the jurisprudential interpretation, the employee is required to guarantee availability during the holidays, only and exclusively if this obligation is foreseen by specific individual or collective agreements. Therefore, in the absence of these specific agreements, the worker is free to organize the methods and places of enjoyment of their holidays, without running the risk of being subject to disciplinary measures.

Having said all this, however, you cannot really give up on holidays, the Italian Constitution also says so and if by chance the worker has not been able to enjoy the rest period, he can request thereplacement allowance and see monetization of unused holidays. “Yes, but it is possible to monetize during the relationship only the days of vacation recognized (but only by some collective agreements) in addition to the legal minimum”, he always explains Emanuela Nespoli. «The holidays accrued that have not actually been enjoyed by the worker during the constancy of the relationship must be paid at the termination of the contract and therefore are not lost in any case. In general, vacation days are paid as are working days. The calculation of the holiday allowance, that is the sum of money that the worker will receive at the end of the relationship for the holidays not taken, is then made using the salary in force at the time of the termination of the relationship also for the holidays accrued in previous years “.