Claim requirements
The following requirements must be met in order to be able to claim leave:
- the leave must be mutually agreed upon by the employee and the employer;
- the leave can only be taken with a valid employment contract.
A qualifying week is defined as a calendar week in which five working days include employment periods pursuant to § 5 BUAG. This requirement is also considered to have been met if the normal period of work was completed on more or fewer than five working days.
Employment periods that do not cover a full calendar week (due to start or end of the employment relationship or omission of individual working days on which the employer has no obligation to pay) are grouped together with other such employment periods, and the resulting qualifying weeks are taken into account.
An employee earns a full leave entitlement (25 or 30 working days) after 52 qualifying weeks within a calendar year. Leave entitlement is awarded in relation to the number of weeks of employment accumulated in a calendar year (§ 4 (1a) BUAG).
Each subsequent calendar year marks the start of a new holiday year. The qualifying weeks in this new year are then counted separately, and not added together with earlier qualifying weeks as in the past. Each calendar year is listed separately on the employee information sheet.
The presence of more than 52 qualifying weeks does not change the amount of a full leave entitlement. The entitlement can include a maximum of 25 or 30 leave days (calculated precisely, a maximum of 25.2 or 30.2 leave days would be awarded). Any additional qualifying amount goes into the holiday remuneration settlement. In this way, the employee does not suffer any material loss.
See here for an example.
If the employee has already earned 1150 qualifying weeks (eligible weeks in the construction industry as a whole), this leave entitlement increases to 36 business days or 30 working days (6 weeks).
Foreign employment periods (comparable activities as per BUAG) can be calculated for the higher claim if employment contracts subject to BUAG are already saved in the system in the preceding period.
A separate submission must be made for these periods. For more information, please call +43 (0) 579579 ext. 3001, or send an email to abfertigung-neu@buak.at.