Two different systems, and that's where it all hinges
In direct employment, public holidays are one of the top sources of pay errors. Not because the rules are unclear, but because they are dual: May 1st follows one system, other public holidays follow another, and mixing them up costs money every May.
The collective agreement for the home employer and home employment sector (IDCC 3239) covers the topic in its core provisions, articles 47-1 and 47-2. Here’s what they say, and most importantly, what they mean in practice on a payslip.
May 1st: a paid day off, no conditions (article 47-1)
May 1st is the only public holiday with an automatic system. If it falls on a day the employee normally works, it is a paid day off, meaning no reduction in pay. No conditions on attendance, no prior agreement, nothing to check: the employee receives what they would have earned if they had worked.
This day off is also treated as actual working time for calculating paid leave entitlements and seniority.
By exception, the two parties can agree that May 1st will be worked. In this case, hours worked are paid at a 100% increase, meaning double pay. This is the only day of the year when this increase applies.
Regular public holidays: nothing is automatic (article 47-2)
Other public holidays follow a completely different logic. The legal list includes January 1st, Easter Monday, May 8th, Ascension Day, Whit Monday, July 14th, August 15th, November 1st, November 11th, and December 25th. In Alsace-Moselle, Good Friday and December 26th (St. Stephen’s Day) are added, and the DROMs have their own day commemorating the abolition of slavery.
For these days, three rules apply cumulatively.
First, working on a public holiday must be specified in the written contract. If the contract says nothing, the employee cannot be required to work on that day unless there is a separate written agreement between the two parties. A household cannot unilaterally decide, mid-year, that a public holiday will be worked.
Second, hours worked on a regular public holiday are paid at a 10% increase (not 100% like on May 1st).
Third, and this is the trickiest point, salary maintenance on a non-worked public holiday is not automatic. It depends on a presence condition.
The presence condition: the rule that surprises everyone
When a regular public holiday is a day off and falls on a day the employee normally works, the employee keeps their usual gross pay provided they worked the last working day before the holiday and the first working day after it.
Let’s take a concrete example. A caregiver works 2 hours every Monday. Easter Monday is a public holiday and a day off. If they worked the previous Monday and the following Monday, the household must pay them their usual 2 hours, even though they didn’t work that day. If, however, they were on leave the previous Monday, the condition is not met and salary maintenance does not apply.
A few clarifications that make all the difference in practice:
- The "working day" to consider is the contractual day before and after, not the calendar day. For a contract only on Mondays, it’s the Mondays before and after, not the Sunday and Tuesday surrounding the holiday.
- A previously authorized absence does not invalidate the maintenance benefit. It’s an unauthorized absence or sick leave that breaks the condition.
- A second non-worked public holiday does not count as a working day for the condition. If Christmas falls on a Thursday and the contract is for Thursdays, you must go back to the previous Thursday and forward to the next Thursday, since January 1st is also a day off.
- The condition applies on both sides: working before is not enough; you must also work after. A public holiday just before an employee’s final departure does not qualify for maintenance.
Like May 1st, a non-worked regular public holiday is treated as actual working time for paid leave entitlements and seniority.
Why this is a recurring source of errors
The presence condition set by article 47-2 is unique to the home employment collective agreement. Many households, and many answers read in support groups, reason by analogy with standard labor law and assume salary maintenance is automatic whenever a public holiday falls on a day the employee normally works. The result is always the same: either the employee is paid when the condition wasn’t met, or they aren’t paid when it was.
Three calendar traps add to the confusion:
- May, which often includes May 1st, May 8th, and Ascension Day, with two different increase rates on the same payslip.
- Year-end, with Christmas and January 1st mutually framing each other and spilling over into the next pay period.
- Movable public holidays (Easter, Ascension, Whit Monday), which change dates every year and are calculated from Easter Sunday.
None of these points are difficult on their own. Taken together, across twelve payslips a year, they make manual calculation unreliable.
What Kiwisio does in practice
Kiwisio applies articles 47-1 and 47-2 of the IDCC 3239 collective agreement directly, rather than a generic labor law rule:
- Working public holidays are chosen when drafting the contract, day by day, with separate treatment for May 1st. Since this must be included in the written contract, specifying it at signing avoids having to negotiate a last-minute agreement mid-year.
- Public holidays are calculated automatically for each year, including movable holidays derived from Easter, and Alsace-Moselle-specific holidays are added based on the workplace postal code.
- Increases are applied at the correct rate: 100% for worked May 1st, 10% for worked regular public holidays.
- The presence condition in article 47-2 is checked automatically on the contractual day before and after, even if it spills over into the next pay period, ignoring non-worked public holidays as framing days, and distinguishing authorized absences from recorded absences. Salary maintenance then appears as an explicit line in the monthly estimate.
- The assistant is integrated into Kiwisio to check a specific public holiday case before finalizing pay.
The goal remains the same as for the contract itself: apply the right rule the first time, rather than discovering a pay error months later, when reconciliation becomes a source of tension between the household and the caregiver.
For the broader context of the contract and the place of public holidays among mandatory clauses, see the article on drafting a Cesu employment contract.