Vacation pay is wages you have already earned, not a bonus your employer can decide to skip. When it goes unpaid, collecting it is usually a three-part job: work out the amount, ask for it in writing, and claim it through employment standards if the employer still won’t pay.
This page covers collecting vacation pay that is owed to you. How much vacation time and pay each province requires (the percentages and the years of service that raise them) is on the vacation pay entitlement guide by province, and the rest of your rights at work are on the workplace rights and employee benefits hub.
The short answer
Add up your vacation-eligible wages for the period, apply your province’s percentage, subtract any vacation pay already shown on your pay stubs, and send the employer a written request for the difference. If that fails, an employment standards claim costs nothing to file and can end in an order to pay.
When vacation pay usually goes unpaid
- When the job ends. Ontario’s guide is typical: “When employment ends (for example, where an employee quits or the employment is terminated), an employee is entitled to vacation pay that they have earned and that has not yet been paid.” That can include pay earned in an earlier vacation year that was never paid out.
- Vacation pay never paid during the job. If you never took the time, or took it unpaid, the pay you earned is still owed.
- Workers treated as contractors. If you were called a contractor but worked as an employee, you may be owed vacation pay for the whole period. The status test is on employee vs contractor status, and what to claim afterwards is on what to do if you were misclassified as a contractor.
Step 1: Work out what you are owed
Vacation pay is a percentage of the wages you earned in the vacation year (or the part of it you worked). Find the rate for your province and years of service in the provincial vacation pay table, then:
- Total your vacation-eligible wages for the period.
- Multiply by your rate.
- Subtract any vacation pay already paid (when it is paid out with each cheque, it appears as its own line on the stub; see how to read a pay stub).
What counts as wages varies by province. In Ontario, the base includes “regular earnings, including commissions; bonuses and gifts that are non-discretionary or are related to hours of work; overtime pay; public holiday pay; termination pay”, and it leaves out vacation pay itself, tips and discretionary bonuses. Other provinces use similar but not identical lists. (Termination pay, the pay in place of notice when a job ends, is explained in the notice period guide.)
Example. You earned $48,000 in vacation-eligible wages over the year, and your rate is 4%. Your vacation pay for the year is $1,920. If $600 of it was already paid, the employer still owes $1,320.
Keep the working: the wage totals, the rate you used and the pay stubs they came from. The same numbers go into your letter and, if it comes to that, your claim.
Step 2: Put the request in writing
Send the employer (or payroll) a short email with the period it covers, the amount, how you got it and a date to pay by, and list the pay stubs you used. A written request is often enough on its own, and if it isn’t, it shows when you first asked and what the employer said back.
Step 3: Claim it from employment standards
If the employer doesn’t pay, you can file a claim with the employment standards office for your province, or with the federal Labour Program if you work in a federally regulated industry. Who handles it, the deadline for filing and what an officer can order are on the guide to filing an employment standards complaint. For vacation pay, the evidence is the calculation from Step 1, your pay stubs and the written request from Step 2.
If other wages are missing as well, such as your last regular pay, see what to do when your employer hasn’t paid you; for extra hours, see what to do when your employer won’t pay overtime. One claim can cover all of it.
Questions about owed vacation pay
My employer adds vacation pay to every cheque. Can they still owe me some? Yes, if the percentage on the stubs is lower than your province’s rate, or if it was left off some cheques. In Ontario, the employer must “report the vacation pay that is being paid separately from the amount of other wages on each wage statement, or provide a separate statement”, so you can check it line by line. Whether you also get the time off is a separate rule, covered on the vacation entitlement guide.
I work part-time. Am I owed vacation pay? Generally yes. Ontario’s guide works through examples of part-time workers earning the same percentage on their wages as full-time staff. The dollar amount is smaller because the wages are, not because the rate changes.
My employer is keeping my vacation pay to cover something they say I owe. Is that allowed? Vacation pay is wages, so the limits on deductions from wages apply to it too. Those limits are set by each province, and the unpaid wages guide gives Ontario’s as an example. If vacation pay was held back to cover a claimed debt, include it in your claim.
Related reading
- Vacation pay entitlement in Canada by province
- How to file an employment standards complaint
- My employer hasn’t paid me: what to do
- My employer won’t give me a ROE
- Workplace rights and employee benefits in Canada
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