Forfeiture of statutory vacation days as of July 1

Over the past Corona year, many employers have accumulated vacation backlogs. These employers may therefore be eagerly looking forward to July 1. As of that date, all statutory vacation days that were accrued in 2020 will expire. For a full-time employment contract, that is 20 “statutory” or “minimum” vacation days. It is, however, a requirement that the employee was reasonably able to take the vacation days before July 1.

It is, however, a requirement that the employee was reasonably able to take the vacation days before July 1. It is, however, a requirement that the employee was reasonably able to take the vacation days before July 1. The employer must:

– to clearly inform the employee what his vacation rights are;
– to enable the employee to take vacation, and;
– to inform him about the consequences of not taking vacation days (namely that these will be forfeited).

If the employer has not arranged this properly, the employer cannot invoke the forfeiture period either. This is a matter of properly recording it in the employment contract or the general terms and conditions of employment.

See a recent judgment, in which the employer was indeed unable to rely on the limitation period for these reasons – the District Court of North Holland of 10 March 2021: http://deeplink.rechtspraak.nl/uitspraak?id=ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2021:4427 . In this atypical case the employer had not realised that the on-call work “to help expats settle in the Netherlands”, constituted an employment contract with all the rights and obligations attendant thereto.

The very short limitation period of 6 months (7:640a BW) is, moreover, at odds with ILO Convention 132, which provides for a period of 18 months.