It's the great holiday theft: The TUC says 2.2m workers are being cheated out of at least some part of their statutory leave

Employees lose £3bn annually through employers denying them the holidays they are legally entitled to according to an analysis of official figures

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady wants the law requring employees to receive 28 days holiday to be enforced (Getty)

When workers steal from their employers they get fired. Sometimes they end up going to jail. There aren't many people who would try to argue with that.

When employers steal from their workers? That’s a very different story.

Today the TUC reveals that up to 2.2 million are being cheated out of at least some part of their holidays. As a result they are losing out on up to £3bn worth of paid leave annually.

That’s the sort of score that would make the Ocean’s crew draw breath. Even the baddies from Marvel would struggle to construct a caper of that size.

OK, OK, I’ll grant you, Thanos might manage it. But he is more than eight foot of CGI purpleness and the biggest badass of the box office smashing cinematic universe.

Working people are legally entitled to a maximum of 28 days paid leave, pro rata, and including public holidays. It’s part of the deal when you sign up with an employer.

Good ones will give you more, and let you take it.

But not all employers are good. Some of them are thieves, because forcing someone to perform free labour is a form of theft.

The TUC cites workers being set unrealistic workloads they can’t complete, employers deliberately denying holiday requests and managing out leave, or simply their failing to keep up with the law as the means they use to succeed with their heists.

Try using that last one as an excuse the next time you come to file a tax return and get it wrong.

I am aware businesses require a certain flexibility from their workforces, and most employees understand that. But that’s easy enough to handle if the flexibility cuts both ways. Bosses can, and sometimes do, for example, allow staff to carry over days they don’t use into the next year if they have to forego leave for, say, the purposes of completing a big order.

It goes beyond financial loss when that doesn’t happen. Many workers already put in thousands of ours of unpaid overtime as it is.

The problem is that people who work excessive hours, and don’t take breaks or holidays, are at risk of a range of nasty health conditions, as the TUC's general secretary Frances O'Grady has pointed out. They include heart disease, stress, mental illness, strokes, and diabetes. These have a negative impact not just on sufferers but on their co-workers, and their friends, and their relatives.

You could make a case that these workers are the victims of GBH as well as theft. Perhaps we should call it aggravated burglary. However you characterise it, employers are still flouting the law here, leading to 7.2 per cent of men and 9.2 per cent of women losing out.

The findings, by the way, are derived from unpublished data from the ONS Labour Force Survey.

Many employers understand that not only is it immoral and illegal to deny people leave, it damages their businesses if their people are reduced to stressed out husks.

The bad ones, however, will continue to flout the laws they are breaking until they are enforced.

The Government has consulted on how this might be done. The figures put out by the TUC suggest that a response is overdue.