Compassionate leave, is employer BU?

[Penguinmode]

DH parent is ill in hospital and he has had to return to his home country to look after them. They are in intensive care and have been now for 3 weeks the outlook is not really know yet.

His employer has given 2 weeks paid compassionate leave and another emergency day, he also had annual leave to use so is taking this currently. They’ve now let us know that he will need to start taking unpaid leave soon. He can’t work from abroad.

WIBU here? DH thinks they should continue to pay the compassionate leave as we are going to struggle on one salary and he can’t leave his parent. But I think his employer has been pretty generous already although it’s going to leave us in a mess and I think he should think about returning home.

His employer been very flexible already imo
Hes choosing to stay there and making himself unavailable for work so he's got to accept that means no pay.

My company don't give compassionate leave unless someone has died. Your husbands company have been very generous, they have a business to run and can't keep paying indefinitely. What is his sick pay like? Can he be signed off with stress for a period of time due to the pressures of the situation? That's what most people in my company would do.

My last employer gave me one day off for my mother's funeral. Your DH's employer has been really generous

I think it’s YANBU as I’m siding with his employer. He absolutely can’t work from abroad it’s not a desk based job.

Oops yes, I see that now. Changed my vote.

It’s very generous. He could get signed off with stress from the dr, it sounds like a stressful situation.

I don’t think the replies have been YABU, it was OP’s husband thinks they should continue to pay and OP thinks they’ve been good to him already. I think the comments and votes are largely backing OP.

I think we could look at the sick pay option, we really can’t manage for unpaid leave as our savings have been decimated with mat leave, childcare and buying our house. I’m not sure how it would work with him being abroad currently.

Could he ask to be paid now and promise to make up the time later? Otherwise only option will be sick leave with the stress.

But realistically his employer has already been very generous - two weeks’ paid compassionate leave is more than most people get when a parent dies, let alone when a family member is ill.

I think there's two separate issues.

I think his company have been pretty generous, so I don't think he can complain about that.

But I also wouldn't want to leave a parent who is in ICU with an uncertain prognosis, so I understand his worry about that.

It's not an easy situation at all and a shame he doesn't have the kind of job where he could work from a laptop (I do and in this situation I could easily work from wherever I needed to be, so I sympathise that he cannot as it takes a whole lot of pressure of. When we weren't sure how long my mum was going to have, I was planning to move down there with the kids and my laptop and work from there).

I think my feeling as a spouse would be to try to enable him to stay there however possible while the situation is uncertain and if there is a risk his parent might die, because missing it is something he could wrestle with for the rest of his life (my husband was told by doctors that his mum was stable for the night so he went home and got a call at 5am to say she had died, and that has stayed with him for years). Perhaps he can speak to the doctors and have an honest conversation about what route things are likely to take, and the speed they might do so.

Sorry for your DH, but his employer has been far more generous than many, my own included (large public sector organisation). Our compassionate leave is 3 days after the death of a close family member (parent or sibling), and discretionary paid leave tops at one week. After that it is annual leave, unpaid leave or sick leave. And sick leave would be subject to sickness absence processes which could lead to dismissal. Whilst this is without doubt a horrible time for your DH, his employer still needs work doing (and if that isn't the case and he isn't being missed, then why aren't they getting rid of the post?) and that is their main priority. No matter how generous an employer may be, in the end, if work isn't done then everyone's jobs are at risk. The point of employment is work, not time off, no matter how good the reason.

This happened to me - I had to travel abroad for a parent in ICU. After a couple weeks and uncertainty of the outcome, I got a 2 week sick note for stress from a doctor there - there was no way I was in a fit state to work and travel back while they were so ill. My employer accepted the sick line and were very understanding of the difficult, stressful situation. I was glad I had the opportunity to be there for my parent. I’ll never regret looking after my mental health in these one-off / very rare, stressful situations.

They will likely have a policy to follow, and shit as it is, they sound as though they have been quite generous already, including allowing extra time off, albeit on an unpaid basis.
My employer’s policy is 5 days off if your child dies, 3 days off for a parent, 1 day for a grandparent. Those are your days to grieve, then you can have 1 more day off for the funeral, then it’s straight back to it 🙈

It makes me immeasurably sad that this is a decision someone has to make, and that so many people are saying it's generous and they only get a few days. We need a universal income, ways to be flexible with working away, better support for times like this. We're all so bowed to capitalism that we think it's fine to have to use annual leave to attend funerals?! We had the chance to build any kind of society we wanted to and we went with this punitive, depressing one that makes someone have to choose between paying their bills or being with their dying parent

The employer has been amazingly generous!

If he asked for more paid leave it would be extremely rude. They didn't have to give him any paid leave, nor allow him to take all his holiday in one go!

What is your DHs long term plan? He can’t stay out there indefinitely.

I remember being in an 'introduction to HR for managers' course at my previous employer where they announced that compassionate leave was set at one day, for immediate family members. I said 'So, are you saying that someone could lose their child or their spouse, and only be given a single day of compassionate leave?' and they said yes, but people might be able to get signed off sick by their doctor if they were grieving enough not to work.

I spent the rest of the course just trying to imagine hearing your husband had been killed in a car crash and then having to get a doctor's appointment the next day to ask for a sick note so you didn't have to do your agonising, snot-crying grieving right there in the office while people were emailing you spreadsheets.

I think the employer has been very generous already.

In many firms a sick note for such a situation when everyone knows he’s not sick but can’t afford unpaid leave would be viewed very badly indeed. In my firm you have to be in the UK to take sick leave and be signed off by a UK doctor except in medical emergencies.

I would encourage him to take as much unpaid as you can afford. Otherwise it’s unfortunate but he’ll have to come home.

What’s their sick leave policy? Our compassionate leave is 3 days but sickness is up to six months so I’d be getting signed off mentally unwell due to stress if I was him.

Yes exactly, it’s awful isn’t it?

To the people advising to take sick leave for stress, don’t you think this is dishonest? From the OP it sounds like he wants to stay with their parent, not that he is so stressed he wouldn’t be able to work.
If he was self employed do you really believe he would not work (and not earn)?

Abusing stress related sick leave is the same as faking a physical illness, it is dishonest and as a result people who genuinely need leave because of stress are treated with suspicion.

It's a horrible situation and one I am personally dreading, given that I have a terminally ill father living on the other side of the world. In my situation, it was my parents' choice to move from the UK and retire abroad but they also expect me to care for them and we're already having a lot of difficult situations about the fact that I can't just drop and run and that part of their choice to move should have been consideration of being alone when old age and illness hits.

I'm lucky that I work for an employer with very generous policies around this kind of thing and, truth be told, it's why I stay in this job even thouigh there are very good reasons to get out. I've already discussed this with my boss and know that I can draw on 5 days compassionate leave plus 5 days carers leave (this is 5 days over 3 years so there's a trade off if my mum was to follow my dad relatively soon), and then actual bereavement leave is seperate and can be up to 5 days including the funeral day. So that's three weeks and I am massively aware of how generous this is but the truth is that it still won't cover the actual amount of time I expect to be away when the inevitable happens and as the highest earner, we simply wouldn't be able to cover the mortgage and bills on DH's salary alone if I had to take unpaid time. So it does keep me awake at night and I can absolutely understand what the OP and her DH are going through - you can simultaneously accept that the employer has been generous while also feeling depsarrate about the situation and wishing they could do more.

Ultimately though, the answer is no, they don't have to, and probably won't, do any more than they already have. It's a difficult situation to manage though and money stress is the last thing anyone needs on top of family illness and potential bereavement.

On a related note, and similar to a PP, I remember sitting through a course on managing different leave policies in a previous job. We were old that we could authorise up to 5 days for a parent, child or other close blood relative but ONLY if it could be proven that the person concerned was directly responsible for arranging the funeral. It was one day only for a grandparent. Any other bereavement (close friends etc) had to come out of annual leave. Someone asked for clarification on spouses and we were told that as a spouse is not a blood relative, they would count as a friend and therefore the widow(er) would not be entitled to bereavement leave.

The employer has already been extremely generous. My dh got 2 days unpaid leave when my dad died suddenly, one for the day he died and one for the funeral. The day after my dad died I was back to looking after 4 dc, including taking my youngest to a hospital appointment that I wasn't ready to do. My dc didn't get authorised time off school for their great granddad funeral, it was parents, grandparents or siblings only, even though they were close to their great grandad and saw him at least 2 times a week. We had to do the cremation bit while they were at school and then have a celebration of life at 4pm so that they could go. Thankfully the funeral was local.

It is awful though and I don't think anyone should be forced to go to work while their close relative is in ICU. Most employers can't afford to authorise that much paid time off work for everyone who needs it though so not sure what the solution is.

I’m staggered in this day-and-age people don’t view severe stress as a sickness and does not warrant a sick line. He’s not off having a jolly abroad. Watching a loved one in ICU is a rare, life-or death situation, extremely stressful for family to witness, seeing a parent hooked up to machines, uncertain outcomes etc. I know when I went through it with my parent, it was so unexpected, I wasn’t able to sleep or function properly, crying in hospital toilets between breaks of being strong and there for them - my doctor and employer was extremely understanding of the stress it brought and I was not fit for work. It’s not taking the piss. My employer knew I was a hard dedicated worker at all other times, and this sick leave was genuine given the serious, stressful circumstances. My sympathies and best wishes to OP’s husband & family.

The disparity and lack of flexibility in rules over leave is awful. My mum died 10 days ago, and I told my manager I was racing down to be with her and probably wouldn't be at work the next day, and then when she died a few hours later, I let my manager know. The first thing she said was 'I have signed you off for at least two weeks. Please do not worry about work at all.' I've ended up going back in this horrid limbo time between death and funeral to try and focus on something else, but the opportunity was there for me to stay off, and I'm taking further time off around the funeral that was granted without question.

My husband was also granted a week's worth of compassionate leave from his work, so was able to come with me back down to my parents' house and watch the kids while me and my stepdad have worked on the practical stuff. He will also get a few days off for the funeral.

I can't imagine having to worry about work on top of all this. It's shit enough.