Work being difficult about covering child illness

[Dontnic]

Help. Tell me I am not unreasonable. I am part time, earn a lot less than my DH and have a far junior job. We have 2 children at nursery at the moment and between them I have needed to take off 12 days since July when I went back to work (I work 3 days a week) to cover illness.

They both had chicken pox, which lasted over 5 of my working days. Also, they keep getting S&D that does the rounds in the nursery. This means if they get it on my 1st day of the week, they can't go back in at all that week due to the 48 hour rule.

DH has had some days off to cover illness, but it just doesn't make sense for him to take equal time off when he has targets to hit, meetings to attend for clients/prospects etc. If his job is affected we are financially buggered. So he does take time off but I do the lions share.

Work have now had enough and said that I can no longer take my holiday at last minute notice to cover child sickness and I have to take unpaid time off for dependants.

However, the BIG sticking point is that they deem a 'reasonable' amount of time for this as up to 24 hours. So I can leave at 2pm but need to be back in the office for 9 the next day. That is the exact example they gave.

I've called my union and they said that this was correct! Apparently the law says 'reasonable' time off but various other places deem reasonable to be up to 24 hours as it is only to arrange alternative care - not to give that care yourself.

I have no family in the area and friends/neighbours are not going to want a sick child... that is if they are free as most of them work too.

What on earth do working parents do during sickness? Apparently even child minders don't take sick children so it isn't as though I can change to a child minder.

LuluJakey1 Your employer may have banned inclusion of absences on references, but not mine. In addition, I seek and have given a verbal reference so people can be honest. Reading between the lines or just the capital letters is often very helpful.

Hi op,
I haven't read the entire thread but I have similar aged children who are always sick so I sympathise.

Would you consider working from home through odesk.com or peopleperhour.com

Could you do content writing, data entry, proof reading etc? You could work on projects when the children are asleep.

Absolutely and that is why DH will take as many days off as I do when Ds is ill and some weeks when my job is particularly office bound and there is very little I can do from home he might take the whole period off. He can rearrange meetings and his boss trusts he will get work one at the weekend if he needs to catch up.

In fact when I had a very much more senior (though still PT) job when ds was younger (age 1-3 years old) I would have taken proportionately more leave to deal with sickness than DH did. Now I would say it is Dh who takes more days off to deal with sickness and I work 4 days a week in a lowly admin job, DH has a senior job in academia.

We're going round in circles with this thatbloodywoman.

Nobody disputes that so far her employers have let her get away with taking the piss. But that still doesn't change the fact that she has been acting in an unreasonable way. Clearly to date they've allowed it and so can't go back on that but going forwards they can change their position.

Nobody disputes that so far her employers have let her get away with taking the piss. But that still doesn't change the fact that she has been acting in an unreasonable way. Clearly to date they've allowed it and so can't go back on that but going forwards they can change their position.

And in reality, this is what often happens - you give an inch, people take a mile, and then the systems get tightened up. Unfortunately, the rules are often tightened for everyone, even when it might only be one person who has exploited the trust and good will that existed previously.

I wouldn't mind betting that other parents in the OP's organisation will now find it more difficult to take annual leave to cover this sort of eventuality.

I may have missed this,op,but has your employer told you the period of notice they expect to be given for annual leave?
You say you have annual leave left.You may find that if your dh takes etofd, 24 hours notice is all your employer operationally needs at that particular time to grant your request.
I think many of us wing it for the first few years,having to use a variety of tactics.
I had an emergency childminder who would take my dc's with ear infections which they were particularly prone to,because it was non infectious.Similarly the nursery would take non infectious dosed- up -on-medicine children so long as they knew and they weren't too bad.
Sometimes you can tell they're coming down with something,so you could pre empt it and request annual leave.
I used to not take my dc's swimming if they had a cold because it often lead to ear problems.
Fwiw I tried childminder and nursery.While they might catch more at nursery,if the children feed to the local infants,I found my dd2 caught less when she started school than dd1 who went to a childminder and wasn't exposed to so much.
You've been through a particularly rocky patch with chickenpox which is a challenge for any working parents.Soon you'll come into the time of year where there's less coughs,colds,and norovirus around,so the worst should hopefully be behind you.
Fwiw I wouldn't leave my ill dc's with someone they didn't know.

How has the op exploited trust by requesting annual leave Snapes ?

I've already said this and am going to say it again. I am not minimising the problems of having to cover someone's work at short notice but after the event, how is taking annual leave to look after kids any different to taking annual leave to take a holiday or go out for the day?

Why does the employer want the employee to take unpaid leave (and so potentially take even more time off) if they've got AL left they can take? Once it's gone it's gone. THEN they can ask for unpaid leave to be taken. But it might never get that far if the kids stop being ill so often.

Years ago I did a 4 day week and when my son was ill I swapped my days round and worked on my day off. After the second time, my boss felt the need to assert his authority and said I couldn't do it anymore and "had to take annual leave instead like the rest of us have to do". I contacted HR and found that I could take up to 5 days dependants leave (paid) to look after kids. So that was added to my annual leave. If he'd kept his trap shut I would not have known and the impact on my employer would actually have been less!

I was lucky that my son got chicken pox around Easter when I wasn't working anyway.

By being immediately absent and using annual leave to cover it OP has pushed her employment contract to its limits, relying on goodwill. Most people don't mind too much, but occasionally parental leave causes excessive problems and colleagues start to resent holding the fort. Maybe that has happened to OPs work colleagues and so her employers have begun to re evaluate the situation.

It isn't unreasonable and, in the link I posted upthread, it is all clearly explained.

How has the op exploited trust by requesting annual leave Snapes?

By requesting it at the last minute on numerous occasions, which probably caused all sorts of problems for her manager and colleagues, and by assuming that her employer would just have to suck it up because her DH's job is more important.

The impression I got is that she hasn't used annual leave at all, because in her last post she said she had loads left?

So I presume she's NOT been using leave for these days off and instead has been taking unpaid leave or something else?

Am I the only one that read the op and her dh work for the same company? May have imagined it... But if so, that does put a slightly different slant on whether they should share etofd equally or whether the company might prefer one or another.

how is taking annual leave to look after kids any different to taking annual leave to take a holiday or go out for the day?

Timescale. If you suddenly take leave no one can redistribute workload efficiently.

Whilst I appreciate it is often unavoidable the attitude that colleagues are beholden to suck it up in silence is a bit weird. After all, they are not willing partners in your family mini crisis. They are colleagues, with families and needs of their own. When one person takes a lot of 'child leave' it gets annoying, a one way street of favours, unasked favours at that!

It isn't really hard to see why colleagues and employers run out of sympathy and patience eventually. But I find it really hard to see the pov that expects colleagues and employers to simply say yes all the time.

Doubt it bedraggled - she said he was in a different department. Her manager will be concerned about the impact on his own team.

Jackie, she said she had been taking leave, but she also said she had been full time until after she came back from second mat leave. So she will have this years pro rata allocation but also last year on mat leave full time allocation. Full time employees at my work get 40 days inc ph to take after they return from mat leave, regardless of whether they then change their hours.

Jackie she said she had been using annual leave but now her employer has said she can no longer do so. So now she will have to take unpaid leave.

I did link to the government site that clearly explains that an employer never has to pay for 'child leave'. Nor can they refuse the leave. However they can simply state it is all unpaid leave.

OPs employer seem to have decided that enough is enough and that the informal annual leave taking will now cease.

OP said in her last post:

I haven't used up all my holiday cover at all. For this holiday year I still have quite a lot left - weeks in fact. But they won't let me take it for childcare. I have to take unpaid and up to 24 hours.

I appreciate the difficulty of last minute holiday requests. But her work are nuts if they won't let her use up a week of holiday to look after an ill child.

Financially, you need to think about the long term and your total family income and not just consider your income versus the cost of a nanny. A nanny might cost more than your salary but not more than your husbands, if you can afford it by making cuts elsewhere, it might be worth it if it allows you to keep your job and career alive for the longer term. The reality of getting back into the workplace after a break is a very stark one.

Instead of resigning, could you take a career break? You could initially take one year, see what the sickness levels are like and then take a decision whether to extend or return.

That way, you have a way back in to your existing company (they don't have to give you a job but will match you to vacancies if available), so aren't burning your bridges as much.

Also, as other posters have said, your children will build immunity, they won't get chickenpox again, so the amount of time needed to look after your children when they are ill will reduce.

My ex employer wasn't giving me my full statutory annual leave entitlement.I was taking annual leave to cover childrens illness that I couldn't get covered otherwise.
They then had the nerve to accuse me of taking sick leave to cover childrens illness,which I had never done.

Thats when I got clued up,and started asserting my statutory rights.My right to minimum statutory leave,and emergency time off for dependants.

I hear what you're saying muminhants !

It's a tricky one. I'm a SAHM but don't drive and DS4 has lots of operations/appointments at a hospital 90 mins drive away. So I need DH to help with transport and/or looking after the other dc. His work have been less than happy about it and now we are trying to look into options to change DH's career to something more flexible.

The point is that the employers don't have to suck it up.
They have chosen to grant the annual leave request up till now,albeit at short notice.

Shapes, yes on an operational level they may be annoyed, but that is pretty short sighted. Depending on how senior he is they might be cutting their nose off to spite their face if they lose a director for 5 days etofd because they refused it to his wife in a junior role.
If that were the case, he could pull some strings high up and get some flexibility (although I appreciate they have been very accommodating so far!) It is all very well saying you at company a need to share the pain with dh at company b, but if they are forcing the director to take time off instead of in lieu of an administrator then they need to think strategically. They could still be suffering up to ten days etofd in total, it is a question whether it is sensible to limit five of those to the wife

Yes, they have chosen to grant until now (perhaps begrudgingly) and now they have chosen not to grant any more.

The OP came on here saying surely they can't do this, and we are saying yes they can.

At least they have warned her in advance that she won't be able to take annual leave next time.

Thinking strategically, bedraggled, it would probably be far easier for the senior person to work from home. If I had to choose between one of my managers being away from the office and one of my administrators, I'd choose the manager any day - much easier for them to get things done remotely.