To ask whether snow day = fully paid day off for you?

[temporarynamenothingtoseehere]

I am following a row on Twitter with a lot of high-profile teachers getting very cross indeed that they are expected either to use snow days for PPA (planning and assessment admin) or lose a day's pay.

I do understand that losing a day's pay is horrible if your place of work is closed and you don't have the choice of whether or not to work.

However, I'm surprised by the expectation that professional adults should expect a fully paid day off with no work when it snows. I've never worked anywhere where that was the case - you don't come in if it's dangerous to do so, but you either work from home or lose a day's pay.

AIBU to think that's the norm?

Nurse here who also often works above contracted hours. Funnily enough our old clinic boiler never breaks down, and staff travelling quite a distance + patients, many 'elderly and frail, always manage to get into clinic despite the snow.

I live in Scotland and have done for 25 years and have never failed to get to work due to snow. Teachers and schools seem very flakey. If it's forecast for snow I park my car very near a main road if not on one and get up early with a shovel. I also have winter tyres.

In poor weather where we are, teachers are expected to go to their nearest school if they can't reasonable travel to their own.

Yes, I think it does say that somewhere in the small-print of whatever, but in over 30 years of teaching, I have NEVER met a teacher or school who actually carries it out.

Teachers and schools seem very flakey.

Unfair and sweeping generalisation. Every single member of our staff made it in today, against all the odds, and 4 of them slipped on ice in the car park, one of whom has possibly broken their hand. The HT asked for volunteers from the parents of 450 kids to come in and help clear some paths yesterday. One person turned up.

I had the choice to pay a day back or take it out of my leave... wouldn't expect it to be written off tho

If the office is closed or closes early then it's fully paid. If the office is open and we don't go in then it's unpaid or annual leave.

There's been uproar in previous years about the no pay but the logic is that if you pay everyone if they can't get in then no one would bother! Also, if you've taken annual leave/unpaid and the office closes, you still have to take the annual leave/unpaid as requested.

self employed (dance teacher). If I don't work, I don't get paid as nobody wants to pay for a class that they can't get their child to. Worse still, I still have to pay my overheads (studio hire) as it's a commercial lease, so adverse weather conditions leave me out of pocket.

I've never understood that going to your nearest school thing. For one, many teachers work outside their local authority area, so they'd be going to work for someone who isn't actually their employer. For another, we're DBSed and safeguarding trained to within an inch of our lives yet we're supposed to think schools will run full of people who walk off the street wearing an lanyard? Yeah, right! I mean, it's fine in theory, I guess, but it's unworkable unless there's a cast iron way of verifying identities.

Where I work if you don't come in due to snow you have to take a days annual leave. The office as far as I know has never actually shut for this reason.

I used to work for a major supermarket at their head office and the rule there was if you couldn't get to the office then you were expected to get to your nearest store and offer your help there. If you couldn't get to a store or wfh properly (ie had a laptop to do a full days work) then it was hols or unpaid leave.

I don't fully understand how so many professions 'cannot' get into work, but NHS staff are just magically able? The topic of someone not getting into work has genuinely not even come up in my unit this week.

Requests were being made for people with 4x4s to take doctors and nurses to hospitals.

A friend who is an ED doctor went to work a few days ago suspecting she might not make it home so she took sleeping bag, food, changes of clothes etc. (She made it home fine in the end.) As an ED doctor she is needed that very day. As an actuary I would not do that as (much as my boss likes to pretend otherwise) no one will actually die if my committee paper is submitted late.

I was about to say that TheFifth. Plus DBS is site and role specific, so even if you turned up with a copy of it and cast iron ID you would still not be legal to work unsupervised with the pupils. Going in to your nearest school used to be a thing, but local budgets, the madness of the current DBS situation and, most recently, academies have put paid to it.
I don’t think teachers are objecting to doing PPA work on a snow day, jut losing other PPA when they get back. It doesn’t really work like that. Say I have a snow day Tuesday, teaching all day Weds and some PPA on Thursday. I plan to use that to mark the books of Y11, who I teach on Weds. I can’t do that on Tuesday because they haven’t done the work yet. Taking Thursday’s PPA would cause a problem.

Mupflup, but it's totally different scenario though in this case. The work place is shut. Even you can go in, place is closed. You can't just turn up to your nearest open nursery or school to offer help.

Only if the office closes (I've known it close early once or twice, but never to be closed all day). In bad weather you can WFH or an alternative location, role suitability permitting. Otherwise it would normally be TOIL or annual leave.

I'm a TA , had a snow day and will still be paid.

I think it depends on the industry. I would in education (but higher education, so at the university level). We have 'university closure days' as standard in higher ed, which is when you get paid like any other day, but the university is closed and you aren't expected to work (in fact, you literally like aren't allowed in, at our university, it's often days when they literally shut down the heating and hot water in the building and keep it locked to everyone but security). Those are paid holidays. I don't work, unless I'm trying to meet a deadline sometimes and I have childcare and then sometimes I might (but it's not expected or required). I don't know what would happen in a snow day. We've honestly never had one! But I imagine it would be treated like any other closure day. So I think it can really vary depending on the field and what is the norm in your industry and institution.

I should add the above 'closure days' are extra on top of our annual leave and holiday allotment (so beyond the 28 days I get off every year anyway).

My school was closed yesterday and today. I was able to get there and would have happily done so, so I would be very annoyed indeed to lose a day's pay. I could have done some PPA, but didn't get too much done due to having my own children to look after. I actually missed my allocated PPA time and would never expect it to be paid back to me- but equally, if my PPA fell later in the week I wouldn't expect to give it up.

Just to point out the obvious, a lot of teachers may have actually had their own children at home with them so might not really have been able to do much work!

I am a teacher and I don't get how PPA time can be moved/ taken away? is this a primary thing??

My frees are when my frees are : they can't be 'moved'.

I spent yesterday doing some light planning for today ,as I would have had to have done anyway and have now effectively lost the frees I had anyway, since they are all on Mondays. My marking was at school so I couldn't do that and no one was sending emails. And I'll be buggered if I am going to use my home phone to make phone calls!!

We weren't expected to set work for our students either : but my DSs' schools did, so that is a new thing.

I think the going to your nearest school might be an urban myth. It certainly wouldn't work now with DBS requirements.

MrsK bit of X posting there!

I'm salaried and public sector, we can work from home if we've had the foresight to take laptops etc. home with us, or take annual leave, or unpaid leave. In practice it's very rare that the majority of people don't make it in, those who live far away will take laptops home and work from there.

Even if the building was closed, and we were working under our business continuity plan, we'd be expected to do something useful at home (there's always something you can be reading up on on-line, latest policy/research etc.) and to be available to be redeployed if needed. I've never known us be completely stood down.

Another complication is that many schools closed because bus companies were not running school routes. That really does force school's hands.

I taught in a different country where snow days are more common. Our contract stipulated how many days were in the school year. While they planned some snow days into the school year, if they needed more they tacked the extras onto the end of the school year. When the school closed for snow, our pay check looked the same, but we were obligated to work the day that school was made up. Non professional staff, such as TA, janitors, etc. were not paid for the day, but would be paid when the day was made up.

A friend of mine who worked for the city in a role that was considered "essential" had the option of having a police car with chains on the tires pick her up.

Piggy I imagine they would direct you to do s9 eth8ng else in your non-contact time. If it isn’t PPA they can ask you to cover for absent colleagues, for example.

There's no should or shouldn't.

If a place of work closes but you're available to work they must pay you.

If your place of work is open but you can't get in then you don't get paid.

Simple.