By Annette Shailer
The AHA is pushing for a reduction in the stockpile of annual leave on the balance in the hospitality sector to help boost the tourism industry.
Currently, there are around 121 million days of accrued annual leave, which accounts for about $31 billion dollars worth of liabilities on business balance sheets.
AHA national CEO, Bill Healey, said the association is putting forward a strategy to potentially save jobs in the tourism industry, which is feeling the economic pinch.
“The association is proposing that for an initial three-year period, employees in Australian businesses would be able to carry a maximum of 300 hours of annual leave forward from one year to the next,” Healey said.
“Excess annual leave above this figure must be used by June of 2010 or it would be forfeited, but ideally, it shouldn’t get to that point because any leave entitlements above 300 hours would be used up.
“This would build on an independent trend of businesses that are already forcing staff to take leave,” he said.
The Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Unions (LHMU) was contacted today (Feb 23) but did not reply before the story went online.