The TUC today launches a campaign a campaign to find the modern Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas’ meanest boss.

Scrooge’s clerk had to work late nights up until Christmas Eve, in a freezing office, with no pretence at a work-life balance. Today things are vastly improved for the majority of the UK’s workers, but those unfortunate enough to work for the scrooges of the 21st century find over-long hours, poor family care arrangements, disrespect and low pay as relevant today as they were in Dickens’ day.

The top five examples of Christmas stinginess identified by the TUC are:

1 - Making staff work on Christmas bank holidays or lose pay: Contrary to popular opinion, there’s no legal right to bank holidays, though most people have this in their contract. Some bosses even close the business on bank holiday, forcing staff to miss a day’s work and pay.

2 – Counting Christmas bank holidays as part of annual leave: There’s a minimum of 20 days’ paid annual leave, but a minority of bosses count bank holidays as part of this minimum, rather than an addition to it. This legal loophole lets some employers get away with in effect only allowing 12 days’ annual leave a year.

3 – Keeping the office freezing to save on heating on heating costs: There is a minimum legal temperature of 16°C in workplace (13°C for active and strenuous work). Below this, staff should be able to go somewhere warmer, or go home.

4 – Dictating Christmas leave arrangements at short notice: Some workplaces are very busy around Christmas, and bosses may want to rule out annual leave requests to ensure continual coverage. However, if they want to do this they need to give staff notice of at least the same period they want to rule out. Other firms find work dries up between Christmas and New Year, so some compel staff to take the time off, even if they would rather save their leave for another time. For this, staff should be given notice of at least twice the period they have to take as leave.

5 – Banning workplace relationships that start at the Christmas party: Many relationships start at work; not surprisingly perhaps, as people spend so much of their time there. Although this rarely causes serious problems, some employers have blanket policies to ban workplace relationships. There’s a valid concern relationship problems might spill over into work, affecting professionalism or causing favouritism, but in most cases a total ban is excessive and employers should treat staff as adults, not children.

The TUC wants to find of these Scrooge traits wants to find which of these Scrooge traits are the most common amongst today’s meanest bosses, and have launched an online ‘Search for Scrooge’ where today’s workers can say which of these are happening where they work, and share any (anonymous) stories about other Dickensian practices in the workplace.

Employees can share their stories here.

General secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, said:

“Christmas should be a time for consideration and harmony. But a minority of stingy employers have lost the Christmas spirit – some even break the law or use mean and petty loopholes to cut costs, at the expense of peace and goodwill at work. We know that modern day Scrooges are out there, and we want to shame them into ditching the humbug.”