Converting Holiday Entitlement for Part-Time Work
Few topics create as much confusion in part-time employment as holiday entitlement. At the heart of it lies a mistake that looks plausible at first glance: work half the time, get half the leave. That is only correct if the number of working days also halves — and frequently it does not.
Working days decide, not hours
Leave is granted in days, not in hours. A day of leave releases you from work on a day you would otherwise have worked, regardless of whether that day is four hours or ten. From that follows the conversion formula: leave days = contractual leave × your working days ÷ 5.
Three scenarios make the difference tangible. First: a reduction from 40 to 20 hours spread over the same five days of four hours each. The entitlement remains 30 days, the days simply get shorter. Second: a reduction to 20 hours spread over two and a half days. The entitlement falls to 15 days. Third: unchanged 40 hours compressed into four days. The entitlement falls to 24 days even though the working time is unchanged.
Anyone who understands this can steer it deliberately in negotiations. Spreading hours across more weekdays yields more days of leave; compressing them into fewer long days yields fewer. Run both variants through the holiday entitlement calculator before signing a variation agreement.
The statutory floor applies part-time too
The floor in § 3 BUrlG applies to part-time work as well: 24 working days divided by six, multiplied by your own working days. On three working days that is 12 days of leave, on two working days 8. If a contract provides less, the clause is void to that extent. The Part-Time and Fixed-Term Employment Act additionally forbids treating part-time staff worse than comparable full-time colleagues without objective justification — proportional conversion itself is lawful, a disproportionate cut is not.
This applies expressly to marginally employed staff as well. The Federal Leave Act draws no distinction by scope of work or insurance status, only by the number of working days. Someone working one fixed day a week as a casual has a statutory entitlement to four days of leave per year, paid at average earnings over the preceding thirteen weeks. In practice this entitlement is very often simply forgotten.
Changing pattern and irregular shifts
It gets more intricate when the number of working days changes part-way through the year. Case law has drawn a clear line: leave already earned may not be devalued retrospectively by a later reduction in working days. Someone working five days in the first half of the year and three days in the second keeps the pro-rata entitlement for the first period on the five-day basis.
In practice you therefore calculate in segments. Example: 30 contractual days, January to June on a five-day week, July to December on a three-day week. The first half gives 30 × 6 ÷ 12 = 15 days on the five-day basis, the second half 18 × 6 ÷ 12 = 9 days on the three-day basis. That comes to 24 days in total, with the 15 days from the first half valued according to the pattern in force at the time.
Some part-time arrangements have no fixed weekly pattern at all but fluctuating shifts. You then take an average: the number of working days in the year divided by 52 weeks gives the notional working days per week used for the calculation. Someone working 130 days a year arrives at 2.5 working days per week and, on 30 contractual days, at 15 days of leave. A written agreement on the method saves a great deal of argument here.
Pay and common errors
For holiday pay, § 11 (1) BUrlG applies unchanged: what counts is average earnings over the last thirteen weeks before the leave begins. On 1,800 euros gross per month and a three-day week that gives (1,800 × 3) ÷ 13 ÷ 3 = roughly 138 euros per day of leave. Overtime pay is expressly excluded, while permanent pay rises within the reference period are taken into account.
Three errors crop up especially often in payroll statements: cutting by hours instead of by days, rounding fractions down where § 5 (2) BUrlG specifically forbids it, and recalculating the whole year's leave after a change of pattern without protecting the entitlement already earned. You can check your figures at any time in the holiday entitlement calculator, which applies the conversion and the rounding rule automatically. This overview is a non-binding orientation and does not replace employment law advice.