Answer:
Excerpt from Clause 4, Article 113 of the Labor Code:
- The employer is responsible for setting an annual leave schedule after consulting with the employees and must notify the employees in advance.
- Employees can agree with the employer to take their annual leave in multiple installments or accumulate their leave for up to 3 years at once.
Excerpt from Clause 1, Article 4 of the Labor Code:
- Ensure the legal rights and interests of employees who do not have a labor relationship;
- Encourage agreements that provide employees with more favorable conditions than what is stipulated by labor law.
Therefore, employers can apply Clause 1, Article 4 to create more favorable conditions for employees. Simply put, based on the annual leave schedule agreed upon by both parties, employees have the right to use their leave in multiple installments during the year or accumulate it for up to 3 years at once.
Thus, employers can consider several interpretations of the legal provisions regarding this matter:
Interpretation 1:
Employees have 12 annual leave days. If accumulated over 3 years, employees can take 36 days off at once (accumulation is allowed, but individual days off are not permitted. If taken individually, it will be considered unpaid leave).
Interpretation 2:
Employees have 12 annual leave days. Depending on the company’s policy, employees may only accumulate leave over 2 or 3 years. For example, in 2023, if an employee has 12 annual leave days and uses 6, the remaining 6 days can be transferred to 2024. In 2024, the employee will have 18 leave days in total, which must be used in that year without further accumulation to 2025 (these 18 days can be used in multiple installments according to the agreement).
Interpretation 3:
In 2023, an employee has 12 annual leave days, uses 6 days, and carries the remaining 6 days to 2024. However, these 6 days must be used in a single installment in 2024 (if only 4 days are taken, the remaining 2 days will be forfeited). For any subsequent leave in 2024, the employee must use the official 12 leave days for that year.
Interpretation 4:
Employees have 12 annual leave days per year, accumulating 36 days over 3 years. The employee and the employer can agree on using these 36 leave days at any time.
Answer:
Trade union fees
According to the law, all enterprises have to pay trade union fees according to regulations regardless of whether they have a trade union or not. If enterprises do not pay the trade union fee, they will be fined 18% – 20% of the total payable amount but not exceeding 75,000,000 VND (Article 37 of Decree No. 28/2020/NĐ-CP).
Level of payment: 2% of the salary fund used to pay Social Insurance for the employees (who have must pay social insurance).
Distribution: If enterprises have established union local:
– Union local is allowed to retain 70% of the total trade union fee that collected.
– Superior trade union is allowed to use 30% of the total trade union fee that collected.
Check-off
If enterprises have trade union, the employees who join the trade union shall pay 1% of the salary for Social Insurance, but the maximum of monthly union fees is 10% of the base salary. If the employees do not join trade union, they do not have to pay check-off.
Distribution:
– Union local is allowed to retain 60% of the total trade union fee that collected.
– Superior trade union is allowed to use 40% of the total trade union fee that collected.
If enterprises do not have trade union, the employees do not have to pay the check-off and the superior trade union won’t collect, the enterprise doesn’t pay the check-off for the superior union.
Payment of deadline
Enterprises pay trade union fund and check-off (if any) once a month at the same time of paying the compulsory social insurance for employees.
Place of payment: The Confederation of Labor (district) where the enterprise is located.
Answer
From Jan 1, 2021, the Employers will not be able to pay for the unused paid leaves at every year end, when the employees haven’t taken all paid leaves.
Prior to 2021, in order to pay for the unused paid leaves at every year end, the employers have been basing on the vague word “or due to other reasons” in the Clause 1 Article 114 of Labor Law 2012.
However, in Labor Law 2019, this regulation was revised as belows:
“An employee who, due to employment termination or job loss, has not taken or not entirely taken up his/her annual leave shall be paid in compensation for the untaken leave days.”
In other words, In Labor Law 2019, the acceptable reasons for an employer to pay employees for the unpaid leaves they has not taken up is now specified and limited to only “Employment termination” and “Job loss”.
