I think that may be a company policy rather than a legal policy. I work for a scottish company in scotland where I am a union rep. My holiday year follows the financial year (april 1 - march 31st) and secondly I do not lose holiday hours that I don't take - that would be wage theft. In theory I can rollover holidays indefinitely but if I worked for a company that did not allow this, the company in question would effectively have to buy any unspent holiday hours from me. There is no use it or lose it, theres use it for time off or be paid for it.
Out of curioisity how many holiday days do you get per year?
That would be stupid I agree, but also not how it works in the UK or California either - according to CAs labour law website, the law there regarding holiday/vacation accrual is no different than the UK:
"California law does not permit "use it or lose it" vacation policies. Vacation accruals may be capped, but may not be forfeited. Therefore, unused, accrued vacation must be paid out at the end of employment"
Since you didn't answer my last question I looked it up, California has no legal minimum number of vacation days? That's grim as fuck and completely shoots down your "California labour laws are better than UK" where the legal minimum number of vacation days is 28 per year.
I say minimum because almost no employer here offers the minimum (who would want to work for someone offering 4 weeks of holiday when other employers offer 5 or 6? Shit man last year I ended up with slightly more than 7 weeks off.
Since I was looking into it, I noticed a number of ways that California labour laws are inferior to the ones I enjoy:
I'm sure there are more but I've seen enough now to convince me that the labour laws in CA are hugely inferior to those in the UK.