Christmas leave priority

@putmeonthebackburner Not sure this is even legal. What if you had an ill parent and wanted to spend a last Christmas with them? Does having an 8 year old trump this. It is also discriminating against unfertile people as other have said- do they never get a Christmas?

So the last two years my husband has taken Christmas and new year off. He’s been priority because he was the only person who had children in his team, the other three blokes are either Muslim/jewish or not particularly bothered by Christmas.
This year, he hadn’t asked for it off because he’s had 2 years. However, they have changed the teams and now he’s moving across to a new group. When he enquired this morning, he was told only 1 person from his new team (8 people) needs to be in every day. He was fully prepared to be one of those but was told by his boss to just take it all, because she doesn’t want “the newbie” in by himself (even though he’s been with the company for 3 years).
Seems to me that sensible workplaces have it sussed like this!!

In my family we have always had family members who have had to do shifts over Christmas including Christmas Day. It is perfectly possible to work round this by being flexible, often a late xmas dinner or even have the main celebration on Boxing Day.

On a rota and if you have a high staff turnover (ie people
wont be here to cover next set of holidays), pick of dates based on length of service.

I would have kicked up merry hell if I couldn’t have flown home to see my terminally ill dad for his last Christmas pre kids : I would have been bottom of the list based on this.

highly discriminatory

And what if you have children AND grandchildren?

Do you get to add the priority together? Move up the chain?

A rota is the only fair way. Everyone has reasons to be off over Xmas, and everyone's reasons are the most important to them.

Yes. The grandchildren thing is ridiculous considering how many posters here only want their own little family around them on Christmas Day and to hell with seeing their extended family.

For me it’s the more the merrier.

And what if you still can’t get the time off? At my job we need 3 people at the clinic in order to function at all. It can be done with 2 but it makes it harder for the 2 at work. Now every single person at my job has young children (except me. I’ve only had 4 miscarriages). So I’m bottom of the pile for priority right? OK fine. I work every single Christmas for at least the next 15 years. Who is working with me? At LEAST one other person with young children has no choice but to work. Probably two. So even with the priority they still have to work and find childcare. And this needs to happen on every half term. Every summer holiday etc. While you might think it’s easy to just give parents all the school holidays off, it can’t work when almost every employee is a parent.

You presume quite a lot.

Fairly sure this is [indirect] discrimination under the EQA on grounds of sex [more likely to be women requesting] and age [only older people likely to be grandparents] and religion/ethnicity [many non-christian employees still require leave over this period if they have children on school holidays].

Really insane that they have put themselves at risk by putting this in an email.

WTAF

Grandparents?? wtf.

I don’t think parents should have priority. And I say that as a parent who has worked plenty of BHs, Xmas etc.

That made me smile.

Requests at my workplace are made in July. If you want a request approved before then e.g. because you are flying home to Australia, you need your co-workers agreement.
Management then approve or decline requests and the spreadsheet is approved.

First come first served is not appropriate
Neither is prioritising people with kids. I say this as someone who HAS kids.

Same with school holidays. I once had a colleague who refused to agree school holiday leave in advance because "he didn't know when it would be or when he might need to take holiday". As a working parent, with a partner who also worked, I couldn't wait for him to sort his shit out.
They bought a policy out in the end because I was getting to the stage of close killing my colleague.

In the end, I told them the reason I left (and took my clients with me) was their inability to resolve holiday cover and their lack of awareness regarding their general inaptitude over assisting working parents / working mothers (this was a firm led by men who had wives who didn't work and therefore had zero experience of trying to manage the juggle because they never had to).

ICK ICK ICK

Right, which is why I said priority and not absolute right. I also said "insofar as is possible" - I'm not assuming this will always be easy for every workplace. But I suppose it depends how important being family-friendly is to that particular employer - for example, they could choose to get supply staff in to cover (if it's possible in that industry, obviously). As I said, I believe that society should be set up to better support parents in lots of ways, and this is just one of them - I am aware it wouldn't be a panacea in isolation.

We are all answering this from the pov of the adult workers and not of the children. I’ve covered Xmas shifts for colleagues because their children wanted their parents there, or needed them, if no dad about. It isn’t that I didn’t matter pre-kids, it wasn’t about me or the colleagues themselves, it was about not wanting to live in a society that doesn’t prioritise children/is very individualistic. For full disclosure though, I’ve had the BHs off for years now, and though I have to travel to see family we look at Christmas as a couple of weeks-long so it’s less stressful. We find alternative dates when we can get together.

No that's not fair (on anyone not in group 1). Group 1 cut off is bizarre anyway. It's hardly as if you can leave a primary aged child home alone once they've had their 7th birthday!

I've been at my workplace for 18 years and our system has always worked well. Everyone submits informal requests and the PA collates them. Boss decides if there is enough people working for skeleton cover. If so, fine. If not then he lists those who had last Xmas off and asks for volunteers with the promise they'll definitely get next Xmas off. He's never had to go to stage three which would be allocating people to work. I've only worked over Xmas once in 18 years and that was actually good fun. I've been on call to troubleshoot most other years (senior manager) but never actually called.

This is the most ridiculous holiday allocation I have ever read!

A grandparent with a grandchild under 7 trumps a parent with an 8 year old, how do they even explain the reasoning for that?

Our Christmas policy holiday is, you can't book in advance, everyone submits their requests within the same time frame. If there are too many requests for the same day, management will look at previous years to see who had what. If it couldn't be decided that way, in a hat you go!!

That's fairest in my opinion, should be fair to all.

Is this even legal? 🤯

So GRANDPARENTS as well as parents get priority over the poor stupid non-reproducers? That is outrageous.

My god, what a recipe for discrimination claims. Everyone has the right to a family life, whatever shape & size their family is. EVERYONE.

Parents childcare issues aren't every one elses responsibility.

me too and me too. When i was a manager, we didn't do first come first served either. We were able to allow alternate christmasses off for all staff. If someone didn't want their christmas, they were allowed preference at another time. We had one staff member with a regular activity camp she volunteered at and also a timeshare week so she got the weeks she needed and never took a christmas.

If there's kids in a household, generally you have the grandparents there so the whole family enjoys it-I'd never not invite the whole family or exclude anyone from that bit.
But many 8 year olds are more excited about Christmas than some 6 year olds-some parents can't be bothered with the whole Christmas/Santa thing, so it seems stupid to have a cut off, and I also get that aunties/uncles might ask why they don't get to have it.
Assuming this is something like nursing/something essential, they should ask who wants to work first, OP. Many people are quite happy to-lots of people don't celebrate Christmas.

but presumably that was your choice and not enforced?

Yes.

I'm not sure why this is repeatedly rolled out as though it's some sort of gotcha... getting pregnant is (mostly) a choice, so do we not need maternity leave?