The Employment Court has clarified what is included within “ordinary weekly pay” when calculating what should be paid by way of holiday pay to an employee.  The case arose around commissions which were paid on irregular intervals to employees.

The dispute arose as to whether these commissions were part of the ordinary weekly pay or could be included in the average weekly earnings for an employee for the calculation of holiday pay.

The Court found that in this case the commission payments were irregular and for varying lengths of time and therefore were not part of a regular commission payment.

Regular commission payments must be included in the calculation of ordinary weekly pay, whereas irregular payments which occur over periods of longer than a week do not have to be included in the ordinary weekly pay for calculation of annual leave entitlements.



Alan Knowsley
Employment Lawyer
Wellington