Travailleurs non chrétiens et jours de congé

Since April 2018, employers have been obliged to give employees from non-Christian faiths days off in addition to the usual bank holidays and days off. This change was made because some companies were not offering non-Christian employees all the days off to which they were entitled.

The amendment to the Labour Code was included in Law 88/2018. Paragraph 5 of this law states that "In Article 139 [of the Labour Code], after paragraph 2, a new paragraph is inserted, with the following content : “3. The leave days established in accordance with paragraph 1 for persons belonging to legal religious denominations other than Christian, shall be granted by the employer on days that differ from public holidays, as determined by law, or annual leave days."

This means that non-Christian workers benefit from both the days off granted to Christian employees, given that the major Christian festivals are recognised as national public holidays, as well as the legal right to take days off for their own major religious festivals, without this being deducted from their rest days (minimum annual leave is 20 working days). This demonstrates the government’s desire to strengthen religious freedom, even if this objective is achieved here through positive discrimination in favour of employees who belong to a religion other than Christianity.