To feel my employer are suddenly discriminating because I have a young child?

[Tayo23]

I work for a government dpt where it is not usually commonplace to be able to work from home. On 19th/20th March when the schools closed, I was asked in work if this would impact me in regards to childcare - it does, and I was offered a laptop to work from home which I gratefully took.

At this point all my colleagues (except for a minority shielding or in similar positions) remained in the office every day as there were a lack of laptops for them - it was BAU. I worked remotely from home, with colleagues in the office uploading my (and other remote workers) work. A week later my office closed (a non-critical govt dpt) however I have continued to work from home since then although my colleagues without laptops were not working at all. My partner was furloughed a week or so after my office closed so has been a great help keeping 4yo entertained.

At the end of April my office advised those without laptops must return to the office one day a week on a rota basis to upload, (to maintain social distancing). I was not asked because it was understood I was working from home. Last week they provided everyone in my office (around 80 people) with laptops. I have now been told that because everyone else now has a laptop, I am now too required to work one day a week in the office, and spend the rest of the week working from home.

My partner returns to work next week. I now am in same position as end of March before lockdown re childcare. They are allowing me to take special leave for the one day a week I can’t come into the office, for 4 weeks. After then I have to use annual leave. I have repeatedly stressed I am willing to continue working each day from home. I just simply cannot leave my child at home alone. My partner is unable to get paid leave off and we would struggle without his pay.

AIBU to feel this way, they understood initially and accommodated me which I was extremely grateful for. I have worked each day whilst my colleagues barely have done until now, but now they too have the facilities to work from home, the goalposts have been moved.

I am not happy being told when to take AL when I have not asked for any time off. Do I have a leg to stand on here if I take this higher than my own line manager (who robotically regurgitates things without much compassion or consideration for people’s individual circumstances)

Then I'd consider one day a week as opposed to 5 incredibly accommodating

Not sure how the OP is being unreasonable in being unable to go to the office as no childcare is available?
We don't know that childcare won't be available, and at the moment, it would seem more likely that it will be.

Why jumping the gun and making allegation of discrimination over a situstion that hadn't yet presented itself anyway?

If people can't do the work due to lack of childcare there will be thousands if not millions happy to take those jobs. it will have no impct on society, why would it?

Also, in normal times, it is quite common for mums of young children at my place of work to ask themselves to have one day of a week for 6 weeks of the summer holidays rather than a full week off to help with childcare. It's a common logical request, so not unreasonable for the employer to suggest it.

Things have moved on, we have equality that we fought long and hard for

Oh the fuck we do. 🤣🤣🤣

When men choose to become fathers they have a responsibility to the family unit and that includes childcare. I don't see why it should just be accepted that 'DP's work aren't flexible' and women should pick up the slack with the associated impact on their jobs.

In theory, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more.

In reality though, when men think their jobs are more important and employers are conditioned by the same patriarchal bullshit, how is it enforced?

I’m lucky. DH works for himself. We’ve been balancing this well since lockdown began. In his old job however, which was full of male fat cats with SAH wives, it would have been SO much harder to enforce this.

Children need care. We know from experience of separation/divorce, that fathers are much more likely to renege on that than mothers. I don’t see why we think this situation will be any different?

there will be thousands if not millions happy to take those jobs. it will have no impct on society, why would it?

Well apart from the small matter of parents bearing the brunt of the poverty.

You know, the ones with dependents, that the have to provide for.

Just that.

There are two extremes coming out now in this thread. There needs to be give and take on both sides. I agree it is not sustainable long term to wfh FT and look after small children. That parents have had to try and do this, and employers have tried to accept/accommodate this, is a by-product of this unprecedented situation. But That is why childcare/schools are hopefully starting to open up as no one reasonably accepts it can continue indefinitely. I am lucky - My employers are flexible and understanding, and know I’m doing my best. To sack me now because of childcare is short sighted and will cost more in recruitment fees/productivity to replace me. I know this and I ‘repay’ by being flexible too - hence taking leave as and when I need to, in order to catch up or just cope.

If this situation (no schools or childcare) continues for much longer (and by that I mean the mythical month of September) then I guess families and employers will need to reassess.

In reality though, when men think their jobs are more important and employers are conditioned by the same patriarchal bullshit, how is it enforced?

I don't think preferential treatment and equality are the same. Whilst some workplaces can still be patriarchal, there are plenty of women without kids doing really well in careers.
It's not being a woman thats the problem its parents expecting preferential treatment from employers, mainly mums because their husbands won't step up, or they aren't prepared to cut hours and tighten belts.
This is an individual problem not society.
I've lost count the amount of times I've heard women saying they are giving up work because their partners earn more than them.

it parents expecting preferential treatment from employers

Parents aren’t expecting preferential treatment

They needs acknowledgement and practical facilitation of the fact that ...

The supports they put in place themselves to support their ability to do their jobs have been taken away.

Children need care and provision.

I’m beyond sick of the goady arseholes who refuse to understand this.

Doesn't sound like you've been discriminated against at all. Sounds to me like everyone else in the office was, being out at risk to stay in the office, whilst you were treated preferentially and allowed to work from home the full time with no risk to yourself of catching the virus.

Your child is not your work or your colleagues responsibility to consider or worry about. You chose to have a child therefore you have to sort out childcare for it. If that means taking AL on a day you would otherwise have to go into the office then so be it.

You can't simply refuse to do your rota-ed day in the office or you will not be fulfilling your job role and then your employer would have every right to pull you up on this and discipline you. Sounds like they have been very flexible giving you 4 weeks leave you sort this out and decide how you will go forward, you or your DH taking some kind of leave to take care of your child.

It doesn't matter if you think the work you're doing at home is the same difficulty/skill level as those going into the office. The fact is those people still have to commute (and pay the cost for this) which lengthens their day.

If I was a childless colleague in your work place and they allowed you to not do any days in the office because of your young child I would actually complain of being discriminated against for being childless. I.e because I am childless I am being made to put myself at greater risk by going in, are expected to have longer days than those WFH because of commuting time, and am expected to spend money commuting whilst those wfh get to save and thus are better off financially.

"You do have the right to have something like 10 days throughout your child's childhood, for childcare alone, it's extra to annual leave. You should find out how to arrange to use those if all else fails."

^to the poster who said this, yes there is a right to take leave to care for dependant but that leave is unpaid and the OP has made it clear they don't want to/can't be unpaid one day a week.

@beabitnicer in a nutshell

@LaurieMarlow

The OP's employer is acknowledging that she has a young child at home. And their practical solution to the OP possibly not being able to come into the office 1 day a week, as her job requires, is to offer that the OP takes AL for these days. That is a perfectly reasonably solution. Flexibility is required both ways and if the OP is refusing to be flexible about when they take their AL that is their fault. Their employer has actually gonna above and beyond in being considerate by giving her 4 weeks with 1 days payed leave first, possibly to try and sort out alternative childcare, before moving onto 1 day a week AL.

YABVU

Yes we chose to have kids, and then we took responsibility and planned our jobs and lives around childcare. Now suddenly this has been turned upside down, because if you have kids in FT education, and were able to hold FT jobs, and invested in a house, cars etc according to your income(we are not even talking about frivolous expenditure here), now ALL parents are asked to give up one job so one can deal with the intermittent education patterns and lack of childcare. How is that going to work? We will all have to downsize and limit expenditure? What is that going to do to the economy. These are not isolated cases.

@Tayo23 I hear you and I agree with some other posters (eg @PicsinRed) that this is structural discrimination. I wish you all the best with trying to sort it out...going above your manager and trying to raise awareness of EDI issues more broadly with HR would be appropriate. Some very dated viewpoints on here.

Children need care and provision.

Yes, exactly. They are born with two free childcarers. You know, parents.
If there's no childcare you sort it out between the parents, unless you want to leave them on their own.
Childcare is closed, schools are closed and some of them won't be open for a considerable time.
This is not the responsibility of employers to sort out, they'll take someone who can be there to do the job.
Why should a family who have sorted out their childcare lose out to those who haven't/can't. When they are probably being made redundant.

Children need care. We know from experience of separation/divorce, that fathers are much more likely to renege on that than mothers. I don’t see why we think this situation will be any different?
Because they're in a relationship and whilst men are responsible for their own actions and attitude, the least we can do as women is not roll over and unquestioningly accept that our partner's job comes first, that they couldn't possibly look after their own children.

Put it this way, in most lines of work there's men and women. Both are likely to have children. Is it really the case that all the employers of men can't make flexible arrangements, but all employers of women can be expected to fit around children given that most companies employ men and women? Or is it that men hear 'ideally not' or think 'looking after my own children would be inconvenient' so don't push the issue and expect their partners to just accept that he has a big important man job to do?

When lauriemarlow said...
The supports they put in place themselves to support their ability to do their jobs have been taken away.

This is it. They put these provisions in place to accommodate me and the situation that was no fault of my own (and also benefit themselves - they needed people to work obviously, which I did and am continuing to do). Now they have taken that away even though the situation currently remains exactly the same.

the OP has made it clear they don't want to/can't be unpaid one day a week
Don't know about can't. Unlrss she is still paying 100% of nursery fees, there would be a huge saving there with her oh back on full pay.

So your work has given you special leave for the one day off for the next 4 weeks so between you and your husband you only need to give up about FIVE days of annual leave EACH from your yearly allocation until schools re-start in September. It doesn’t even rely on your husbands work having to be flexible. He has a legal entitlement to annual leave so he should used 5-6 days of that. If his employer won’t let anyone take annual leave now as his work has recommenced fine, use yours now and he can use his when he’s allowed to in July or August or whatever.

Like everyone else on this thread has said, 99% of people I know have to take a certain proportion of their annual leave before the end of summer anyway because employers can’t have everyone taking their leave off all at the same time at the end of the year. Everybody in the country is having to give up some of their leave now regardless if they have anything to use it for or not. In fact, even in the absence of a pandemic most people have to use a certain proportion of their leave by certain dates in year so it’s not used all at once. Most people don’t use annual leave for a literal holiday. It’s for days when you either can’t or don’t want to work.

The one who's discriminating against you is your sexist partner, not your employer.

They have taken that away as it was preferential treatment to your colleagues, you need to see this.
They have "taken away" your privilege to put you in line with your colleagues, not still having special treatment because you are a mummy.
I can't believe some parents are that entitled they can't see this.
Why do you deserve preferential treatment, I'm sure you aren't the only parent working there.

@OP

That happens all the time when there isn't a pandemic too. Nurseries close or won't take your sick child, grandparents die and can't be used for childcare anymore ect. Your child that you chose to have is still only the responsibility of you, not your employer, even those these changes to your childcare arrangements were unexpected and no fault of your own.

They put provisions in place to accommodate you short term and were incredibly accommodating, they could have just told you to take unpaid carers leave. Now that the short term is becoming long term, (this virus isn't going anywhere anytime soon and wfh is likely to be the case until At least the end of the summer) they are making provisions to go back to working as normally as possible.

This means every worker having the same responsibilities to fufill as part of their role and for your job that responsibility includes going into the office one day a week. Everyone in the office has to do this as to only choose one set of people (I.e. the childless) to do it would be unfairly discriminatory for the reasons stated before (higher risk, commuting time and cost ect), and to cherry pick certain people not to do it is preferential treatment which is also not allowed in the workplace. Therefore for it to be fair everyone has to do one day a week.

Now your workplace has been very accommodating to you, offering for you to wfh earlier than the rest, giving you 4 days paid leave (over 4 weeks) to give you time to sort out with your husband how to best organise childcare for your child. You could either alternate taking one day AL or unpaid leave so your each only taking one day off every 2 weeks or you can choose for one of you to take all the single days off as AL/unpaid leave. That is for you and your DP to decide based on what works best for your household.

But your employer is absolutely not discriminating against you by expecting you to do the same work as everyone else in your workplace (including going in one day a week). Plenty of people have told you this with plenty of valid reasons yet you refuse to accept this and seem to just want preferential treatment for the foreseeable future .

beabitnicer

If you read back through my posts I have repeatedly said that I was after some outside perspective. And this thread has given me that. I have also now said I will have to take the AL and may have had a skewered perception of this situation initially. I am not refusing to accept this and wanting ‘preferential treatment’. Plenty have people have told me this yes, but quite a few have also agreed with my OP too.

Again, it’s not ‘preferential’ to my colleagues that I worked every day when they did not on full pay. It’s not preferential that they go into the office one day a week and I stay at home to work when that is literally what they would ‘prefer’ to do, rather than work. It may be ‘preferential’ in another job, or from an overall perspective, but in relation to my colleagues, in our job that lacks much sense and logic at the best of times, none of it has been preferential towards me - this is from the mouthes of my colleagues.

However. I do understand that lots of people are having to take AL atm and that’s not unique to me, this thread has helped me better understand the wider picture and I accept that this must something I must do. And that DP will have to also address these issues much more forcibly with his own employer.