Teacher strikes and work plans

[Yellowcoffeecup]

Not sure who to be pissed off with teachers or work colleagues.

Big face to face team meeting next Wednesday. Whole morning.

Been in diary for couple of months.

Due to teachers strike colleagues now saying they can't make the meeting. They're saying they can't join on line either because of distraction by their children.

Fine - take a days annual leave or make alternative arrangements for your children.

Not a meeting to easily rearrange.

AIBU to be pissed with teachers ?
AIBU to be pissed with colleagues ?
AIBU all round ?

Teachers get marked down in lesson observations if something they planned goes wrong and they don’t have a back up. You wouldn’t be good enough to be a teacher. Maybe you should be thankful that some people are and try to support ways to keep these people in their roles, because a lot of them have had enough.

Why do MN TRY and read so much into posts !

I wasn’t trying.

The world doesn't revolve around teachers what they do in the classroom

The strike is to improve conditions in schools for all children. No teachers are saying the world 'revolves around them'. It's strange how you've got that from the previous comment.

Wow, that's one of the most disgusting, smug and judgemental comments I've ever seen on here, @Mark19735- and that's saying something.

Perhaps the OP has adult children and has done her time as a mother and is now focusing on her career. Perhaps she chooses not have children and prefers to put her energies in to something more mentally stimulating. Maybe she desperately wanted to have children but was unable.

Or perhaps you've just completely missed the point of the post- this is not about supporting/ not supporting teachers or whether or not people are angry at the government. OP is annoyed (rightly or wrongly) that the meeting has been cancelled, and it's also about whether it's acceptable to 'work' from home whilst minding children just to save yourself and annual leave day.

Not everyone makes the same life choices as you, or has the same choices available to them. My friend found out last year that she is unable to have children, she has thrown herself in to her career since. And yeah, she's been frustrated that so many meetings, conferences etc have been cancelled due to train strikes, so I'm sure she'd sympathise with OP.

Stop perpetuating the antiquated, anti-feminist and cruel idea that childless women are heartless old spinsters. This is 2023 not 1952.

YABU to be pissed off with teachers... and colleagues!

Be pissed off with the Tory govt and actually research WHY teachers are taking such desperate action....

It cannot be done so therefore I am pissed off and yes colleagues should take annual leave.

Well I agree with this. If you can't do your job with children at home then you should take leave otherwise you're being paid for doing nothing. But surely this means they won't be attending the Very Important Meeting anyway, because they're on leave.

I do think your colleagues are a bit feeble though.The strikes affect school age children, most of whom can understand they need to be quiet and goggle at the TV when mum/dad is working from home. That's going to be the situation in our house. It's not ideal but strikes are supposed to be disruptive to make the desired point, so whilst I'm sure I'll moan about it a bit, I'm still supportive of the action taken.

My work, by contrast, are being brilliant. We’ve rearranged next week, everyone who needs to can WFH and (as it’s one day and we’re all grown up professionals) we’re being trusted to manage our work (yes, I will probably do a couple of hours in the evening to make up for three minutes here and there when I have to sort my 6 year old). I realise that won’t work if you can’t WFH but it sounds like the OP can.

(People taking the piss WFH normally is a whole different story and I have great sympathy there with managers getting peeved).

@AutumnColour89 - I've just checked the URL of this site, and it is in fact still called mumsnet.com, so I'm not sure what you are contributing.

The OP and those who've posted in support are being judged for their lack of empathy, not for their personal circumstances. The premise of those posts was blatantly anti-parent. I'm not perpetuating any 1950's tropes ... the OP is. The dissonance between arguing a meeting is important and then demanding that parents take leave so as to atone for non-participation for reasons entirely beyond their control is blatantly an attempt to punish working parents. Most modern companies and managers could easily accommodate working from home, as was shown during Covid, and if they no longer think they can, it's because they are being punitive and unreasonable.

The people who make working mothers' lives the hardest are quite often other women. That is why mumsnet.com is such a valuable resource for support. And sometimes that support comes in the form of people saying "You are being very, very unreasonable indeed".

Just for clarity I have never said the colleague is female.

So stop making assumptions about the gender of my colleague and my 'childless' situation ( they have grown up BTW) .

Typical MN hysteria !

No employee should be using a day of their holiday leave to attend your work meeting. Your meeting is not a vacation. Don’t be ridiculous. These are exceptional circumstances, not people just fancying a day off.

So, on reflection, I'm sorry about my first post. It was snarky, and I jumped to a conclusion I shouldn't have done.

I am firmly on the side of the working parents on this AIBU, but I accept that there are other perspectives too, even if I disagree with them.

I'm not asking them to take a days leave to attend meeting.

They are saying that they basically cannot work that day , can't attend f2f or attend virtually - so therefore take a days leave.

I agree with you OP on the fact that if you can't work, either from home or at the office, then of course it should be a day's leave.

Many people worked through covid and no childcare.

In your position I'd expect the meeting to happen with those people at home online. And if the children are too young to be able to have 1hr uninterrupted I agree, it's a day's leave.

Meeting aside I don’t really get that you are working but can’t do the work, so it should be cc or AL

Well it is childcare. That's not it's primary function but it provides a safe space for our children during predetermined regular hours which means we do not plan other childcare to cover school hours.

During school holidays / inset days there are alternative childcare options available such as holiday clubs. There is not that option on a strike day so many parents will not have any alternative childcare in place or even available to pay for.

I think you could be a bit flexible about a particularly long meeting. Most people could manage to work from home for a one-off with kids if they have short meetings or can get on with some written tasks. It seems to be cutting off your nose to spite your face to insist they take annual leave (so they can't attend the meeting anyway) when you could just move the day of the meeting and let them get on with some other work one day. It's not as if they are asking to work with their kids around every day.

I wouldn't be expecting my staff to take annual leave. It would be parental leave.

Being a manager is more than just a job title OP. You sound like you're missing the opportunity here to support your staff and make them feel valued and respected.

Do you respect them? If so, why are you placing a meeting above their needs as parents to look after their children who have no other childcare options?

What alternative care do you think is realistically available for most people?

Good managers develop their staff and appreciate that they are real people. If you treat them like machines, they'll leave and with it you'll lose value.

If school wasn’t childcare they wouldn’t have bothered with keyworker places in pandemic. And people wouldn’t have tried hard to secure a place especially second time round.

It’s a meaningless line often used on here, usually by people not experiencing difficulty of getting cc in short amount of time

The 'school isn't childcare' line does my head in. Of course it's bloody childcare, otherwise every household with primary aged children would need one non-working adult! Is that what people are really suggesting when they keep trotting this line out? That would seem somewhat regressive...

The teachers striking because their pay rise is to be taken from the budget the school,have so the school will have less to spend on the children ...
It's not the teachers fault .
They are trying to stand up for education !!

If it can't be moved, could you make things easier by breaking it up and scheduling some breaks? Many primary school aged children can occupy themselves for a time, but not for 3 hours solid. Perhaps 40 minutes at a time then a 10 minute break. They can set a timer so that the child can see when mum/dad will be available again, and so they'll be less likely to interrupt.

Please OP - tell us (just in a nutshell) what the objectives/focus of your meeting are?
I’d love to know.

It's one-off days so not at all comparable to the pandemic where people were trying to work months on end with children at home. I wouldn't have thought it was that difficult to rearrange one two-hour meeting so that for a single day parents can wfh on tasks where it doesn't matter so much if they are briefly interrupted from time to time and put the meeting on a day when there are no strikes. Presumably some businesses would have rearranged in-person meetings on days when train strikes might have affected staff getting in.

However, as a striking teacher, inconvenience is the point. Please write to your MP and tell them how your business is affected. The more disruption they see, the better it is to get our point across about how the country cannot function properly without enough teachers.

Haven't RTFT, but what difference would it make if they took annual leave instead? They still wouldn't be able to make it so you'd still have to rearrange it...