WORKERS were “cheated” out of £2 billion in holiday pay last year, a TUC report revealed as the union federation began its annual congress in Brighton today.

The report said some employers were deliberately denying holiday requests and had created a culture that led workers to fear that asking for paid time off could result in them receiving unfavourable treatment.

In other cases, staff struggle with unrealistic workloads that do not allow time to take leave, contributing to 1.1 million workers not using any of their paid holiday entitlement last year, said the TUC.

The report said the “missing weeks” of holiday paid averaged £1,800 for each affected employee.

The research indicated that black and other ethnic minority staff were hardest hit, with 6 per cent not having any paid holiday last year, compared with 4 per cent of white employees.

The jobs with the highest numbers of staff losing out were waiters and waitresses (59,000), care workers and home carers (55,000) and kitchen and catering assistants (50,000), showing that low-paid workers were most at risk of losing paid holiday entitlement, said the report.

The TUC is supporting Labour’s plans for a fair work agency and has accused the previous Conservative government of allowing bad employers to cheat staff out of basic workplace rights.

General secretary Paul Nowak said: “We all deserve a break from work to spend time off with our friends and family, but more than a million working people have been deprived of any of the paid leave they are due and hundreds of thousands more have been denied basic rights like being paid the minimum wage.

“Now it’s time to reset the dial and to end the Tories’ race to the bottom.”