Annual leave in Luxembourg

Annual leave in Luxembourg

All employees, including apprentices, regardless of their working hours, whether part-time, full-time or otherwise, and regardless of the type of contract, fixed-term or indefinite-term, are entitled to paid annual leave in Luxembourg. It should be noted, however, that the leave of part-time employees is calculated pro rata to their weekly working hours.

This right is inalienable and cannot be renounced or exchanged for financial compensation. Only if the employment contract is terminated is it possible to receive remuneration for the leave days not taken before the end of the employment relationship.

Duration of legal paid annual leave in Luxembourg

The statutory length of annual leave in Luxembourg is 26 working days per year and accrues as time worked is accumulated at a rate of 2.167 days of leave per month worked. However, employers or collective bargaining agreements may grant additional days of paid leave.

For part-time workers, the calculation is made in hours, starting from a base of 208 hours of leave for a full-time job (26 days of 8 hours of work) and multiplying it by the hours worked per week over the working hours of a week, which is 40 hours. For example, to calculate the number of leave hours an employee working 24 hours a week would have, it would be necessary to multiply 208 hours by (24/40), which results in 124.8 hours of leave per year.

In addition, certain categories of workers are automatically entitled to additional leave days:

• Disabled, war invalids and those who have suffered an accident at work: 6 days.
• Employees of mines and quarries: 3 days per year.
• Those who have not had an uninterrupted rest of 44 hours per week: 1 additional day off for each period of 8 weeks, successive or not, in which the worker has not enjoyed continuous rest.

Procedure for setting leave dates

The first point to take into account is the moment from which leave can be taken, in this sense, in Luxembourg new employees must work for at least 3 uninterrupted months before they can enjoy the paid leave they have accumulated since the beginning of their contract unless there is a different agreement with the employer or in the case of temporary workers for whom this does not apply.

From this moment on and in general, it is the employee who chooses the leave days, the employer cannot impose leave dates without the employee's agreement nor can he force the employee to take unpaid leave.

However, before being able to take the leave, the employee must first submit a request to the employee who must give his approval. If the employee does not give his approval, it is presumed that the leave has been granted. The employer may deny the request if it is incompatible with the needs of the company or the justified wishes of other employees, but if the employer repeatedly denies requests without giving a reason this constitutes gross misconduct and may justify a resignation with immediate effect. The only case in which the employer may refuse to grant leave is when an employee has unjustified absences exceeding 10% of the work time normally rendered during the part of the year already elapsed.

Leave may be taken all at once or in several periods if the company or the employee so requires, in which case one of the leave periods must correspond to at least 2 calendar weeks, each of which is equivalent to 5 working days.

Although the worker is generally free to choose the leave days, there are certain restrictions for apprentices and for workers in certain economic sectors.

• Apprentices: they must take their leave during their vocational training vacation.
• Workers in the agriculture and viticulture sectors: cannot request their leave between June 1 and October 31.
• Workers in the hotel and catering sector: they cannot request their leave between June 15 and September 15.
• Employees working in credit institutions and investment companies: must take at least 10 consecutive days of leave per year.

In addition, in the case of companies that close for annual leave, the collective leave period must be agreed with the personnel delegation or with the workers concerned. In addition, the employer must inform its employees of the chosen collective leave period during the first three months of the year.

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Postponing leave to the following year

Leave must be taken during the year to which they correspond, although there are some exceptions:

• Annual leave not taken from the 1st year of work in a company: may be carried over to the following year at the request of the worker.
• Annual leave not taken at the end of the year due to the needs of the service or justified wishes of other workers: can be carried over to the following year until March 31.
• Annual leave not taken before maternity leave: may be carried over to the following year until March 31.
• Annual leave not taken at the end of the year due to incapacity for work: may be taken after the date of resumption of work.

In addition, the employer may establish a more flexible system which may include, for example, an unlimited carry-over of unused leave days from one year to the next or other employee-friendly measures.

Sickness during leave

When falling ill during leave, it is necessary to notify the employer and present a medical certificate at the latest on the third day of incapacity for work if the employer is a Luxembourg employer or as soon as possible otherwise. The days covered by the medical certificate are no longer considered annual leave and must be rescheduled by mutual agreement between the employer and the employee. In addition, at the end of the scheduled leave, if the worker is no longer unable to work, he must return to work on the date initially agreed upon.

Remuneration during the leave

During leave days, the employer must continue to pay the employee a salary corresponding to the average salary during the three months preceding the leave for employees with a more or less stable remuneration or the last 12 months for those with a remuneration subject to significant variations. The average salary must include overtime and ancillary bonuses and exclude non-periodic payments such as bonuses or performance-related bonuses.

In order to calculate the remuneration corresponding to leave, the average salary calculated according to the above parameters must then be divided by 173, which corresponds to the number of working hours in a month, and then multiplied by the number of hours of leave. For example, for a worker with an average gross salary of 3500 euros, the remuneration for one day of leave would be equal to 3500 euros divided by 173 hours and multiplied by 8 hours, which gives 161.85 euros.

Finally, it is important to note that it is not possible to exercise a remunerated activity during leave time on pain of being deprived of salary during this period.