AIBU re unpaid leave for a holiday when still has some holiday allowance

[allmycats]

one of our employees has 14 days of paid holiday left but has asked for 10 days unpaid leave as well - the situation is that he is using paid leave from 22-26 July for a holiday with his wife and child - he has now asked if he can have 10 days unpaid leave to follow on from this so that he can go on a 'mens' only trip with some other male members of his family. he does not want to use any more of his paid holiday leave to cover this as he wants to save this for time off with his wife and child.
we are a small set up with 3 full time and 2 part time staff and this puts us in a difficult situation regarding production as we cost into our pricing the paid holiday leave, with subsequent drop in production. he also does a specialist job and it is not possible to use someone else to fully cover his daily work tasks, so some jobs will be held up affecting our invoicing and subsequent cash flow.
because it is 'unpaid' leave he does not see a problem and we do try to be accommodating with our staff
it would not be so bad if he did not want to tag it onto his already arranged holidays leaving us with 3 working weeks without him
would it be unreasonable to say no as we do not want to set a precedent
here, what would we do if the others all started to want unpaid leave

You've got valid business reasons for saying no. He has requested unpaid leave, it doesn't work for the company, so say no. Happens every single day in other organisations. It's good to be flexible, but there the needs of the business take priority.

have no experience, but I'd say its up to you, if it doesn't suit the business I don't see a problem with it being refused

try to ask flowery, she's the hr expert round these parts!

YANBU hopalong said it perfectly.

Surely unpaid leave is for emergency situations and exceptional circumstances not simply an entitlement to extra holiday. Paid leave is normally used first. What is your policy on length of absences? Many companies restrict the number of weeks taken at once to 2.

YANBU

Agree with above posters & especially LIZS.

I would not allow it - you will be setting a precedent for everyone else. Wherever I have worked paid leave is used first & unpaid is authorised at companys discretion.

Unpaid leave has to work for the company. Our Employers (small company) authorised a week when one of my colleagues had no leave left & her daughter went into early labour so she could babysit other GC .

Depends a bit on how much you value him, and a lot on if the business can cope without him.
How old is his child if under 5 couldn't he take the family holiday as parental leave?

I do HR for our company

Basically, anyone can make a request for unpaid leave. Usually though it is used for emergencies.

In this situation I would say no. You have a valid business reason for refusing.

And basically he is wanting more holiday than his allowance, which is tough quite frankly!

Thank You for your comments - they are as I thought - he just wants extra holidays and because his wife earns mega money he can afford unpaid leave.
As the business can't stand it at the moment (our major contract has been undergoing restructuring and he knows that the situation is on a knife edge regarding them not paying us and trying to go into liquidation and then start up again) we are being genuine in saying that we cannot grant him this request and are not just 'being arsy about it'.