Job Share response to hol request

My dad is a retired teacher and my mum worked in retail, and after I'd left home holidays were a real bone of contention in their house. My mum wouldn't fight for time off in the school hols because she knew others would get first dibs 'because they've got kids in school', despite my dad saying til he was blue in the face, 'Well, you've got a HUSBAND in school!'

Being subjected to ageism must be awful. I’m sorry you have to deal with that. In terms of school holidays, teachers are also restricted, it’s not just parents, and many teachers don’t have children. It’s interesting that the needs of teachers aren’t talked about where holidays are concerned.

Interesting. In my experience, women without children don’t seem to need to use their parental status as an identity - I’ve never heard anyone say ‘as a childfree’ or ‘I’m a childfree’.

Cheeky fucker.
Though sometimes child free, which can get confusing...

TheNavyDeer · Today 22:10

You’re right. There’s so much prejudice towards the childless and single people in society - it’s actually quite sinister and it constantly goes unchecked

There's prejudice against a lot of people in society and the one I personally am most often subjected to is ageism these days. That goes unchecked too.

However, the fact remains that families with children ARE the most restricted when it comes to annual leave, as soon as their children start school. That doesn't mean they get preferential treatment, but it's ok for them to express that they are more restricted because it's just a fact.

I'm really pissed off with the allocation of annual leave where I work. The whole team has to submit requests for out of term-time leave, and the team manager approves or doesn't approve it at short notice, making it virtually impossible to book anything months away when it's cheaper. We're also restricted to one week at a time in term-time, unless it's tagged onto a school holiday closure. I haven't fallen foul of it yet, but I am sure I will in time!

What does a CF mean? Sorry, new to this

You’re right. There’s so much prejudice towards the childless and single people in society - it’s actually quite sinister and it constantly goes unchecked

This isn’t that. If it was it wouldn’t be asked as a question on here would it.

"Asked to" and "made to" are not the same things, and trying to be accommodating to the wishes of your employer fairly normal.

Ask the OP! She seems convinced this is the case and that it’s normal. Otherwise she would have just booked it off already.

Op you are not BU xx

So just book it off then? I feel perhaps like this problem is being created by the two of you.

Who's being made to do this, rather than requested, and how do you know the terms agreed in the contract?

Making someone work hours over their contract in order to take their holiday entitlement

What law do you imagine is being broken?

It's only 7 months in advance that's not an overly long time to book your annual leave in advance, I'd say most people book to go away further in advance than that and things like weddings and covering kids holidays etc would all need to be done in advance. There's an easy solution if that really is her problem to start deciding when she wants to go away earlier. In any other job it would be fine booking annual leave on a whim but if you're in a role where your colleague is expected to cover its not really fair to book things last minute.

This is exactly what I was going to say. I work in a job share where we are both pt, so do not cover each other.

Precisely. This is such a ridiculous
(and illegal) situation.

Stuffed as in they might struggle to get to current two others to cover.

I honestly think the problem is the company doesn’t have enough people trained as back up for the role. If one person went off sick for 3months they’d be stuffed. If OP needed to take emergency leave as she had dependents, what happens then? Again this is a manager’s problem.

Exactly.

Job shares are primarily done by women.

It's a major problem if women feel that they can't take leave because their job share partner is doing so.

While being able to cover the job share partner is one of the benefits, it should not be taken as a condition of a job share. Treating job share annual leave conditions less favourably than non-job share conditions is a no go.

As a manager I let people have holidays on a first come first served basis. The whole team know this and know the rules regarding holidays.

I generally only have one person off at a time so if the dates are taken then others need to look at alternative time. It’s not mine or my staffs issue if dates aren’t available.

I don’t expect my staff to cover others holidays (we make do) or I juggle the rest of the working team a bit. I don’t think it’s fair or legal to expect others to come in on their time off to cover others annual leave. People have lives away from work and asking them to give up that time is a big no no for me. I wouldn’t be happy doing it so why should the staff. If they are looking for overtime and have made that clear then yes I might consider it.

Really it’s up to HR or the manager to tell the colleague no you can’t have the dates as they’re already booked or if they do grant them then it’s up to them to get cover.

Could maybe your colleague not mean that I don’t know what I’ll be doing in x months so don’t know if I can cover rather than no you can’t have it incase I want to book something. I know if I was asked for a shift swap it asked to cover even in a couple months I wouldn’t have a clue if I could or not.

Have a read about pronatalism in the workplace, and society in general, to understand people’s issue with the ‘no children or partner’ comment. It will probably also explain the co-worker’s response. Bias towards the childless, and single, is a very real thing in the world. That’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact.

yanbu. I also like to book my leave in advance. I don’t expect to book it all way ahead as I think the first-come-first-served expectation isn’t fair either. And I don’t expect to prebook lots of peak leave / school hols.
But I have colleagues who always say this “oh I don’t know what I’ll be doing then”. It makes booking specific accommodation / locations really difficult. Sometimes I don’t even care which non-peak week I book - I just want to get it in the diary!

But they couldn’t just repeatedly deny you holiday because legally you are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks.