Want a holiday but 16 year old can’t get leave

[Irishmama100]

So my 16 year old has a retail job, 8 hour contract and has been refused leave for when we went to go on our summer holiday. Can’t leave them at home on their for 11 nights

1)I am unreasonable - I should just scrap the idea and no one in the family gets a holiday.
2) I am not being unreasonable - I Should just book it anyway and they can quit and get another job

A 16 year old who is on an eight hour contract being refused requested leave for a family holiday is a dead giveaway for a very poor employer . The summer holidays are coming up, many permanent full time and pt staff with children will be taking leave so there will be lots of gaps in the rotas. Potentially losing a known, trained, reliable and willing member of staff who would likely be available for extra hours during the summer is very shortsighted .

A 16 year old who is on an eight hour contract being refused requested leave for a family holiday is a dead giveaway for a very poor employer . The summer holidays are coming up, many permanent full time and pt staff with children will be taking leave so there will be lots of gaps in the rotas

Exactly! That's why they probably have a holiday policy...
If they let everyone have the time off that is requested, they will easily end up understaffed or no staff at all on certain days.

A Work comittment is a work commitment. It doesn't matter if you are 16 and still at school or 65 and retired- you need to take it seriously or quit and don't expect anyone else to employ you with such an attitude.

Small business owners certainly do get together and bitch in small towns - they're all in the Chamber of Commerce and likely in the Rotary or Masons too and word about problematic employees soon gets round.

I think you're over thinking it. This is a Saturday job, it's not going to have any impact on their future. Family time is important, you should be delighted you have a 16 year old that wants to holiday with you, that may not last much longer.
They clearly already have a decent work ethic and understand the value of work if they've been in the family business for some time already.

OP, this job would drop your DC like a hot pancake if the company didn't need them anymore. I wouldn't be thinking that your DC owes them any particular loyalty.

I would tell your DC to say to work, "Sorry I won't be able to come in on these dates as my parents are away on holiday and so I won't have any transport" and see what they say.

Perhaps in the days of jobs for life and all that. But not nowadays when a lot of employers view staff as dispensable when they don't need them. Loyalty is a two-way thing.

I still think the obvious solution is for DC to follow the rest of the family later and/or come back earlier. It would mean they wouldn't get the full holiday, but at least it wouldn't disrupt the rest of the family.

No, that is not the case at all. They do not have to be given time off for a family holiday.

The young person should absolutely have to adhere to whatever holiday booking procedures the employer has in place, however it sounds like a dreadful policy all round for all employees (someone I know who used to work for Argos had this start of the year thing and it caused all kinds of issues)

For an 8 hour Saturday job for a 16 year old if it was me I would absolutely say stuff it and resign, the exception being if she really needs this job financially then she will have to suck it up.

With regards to a parent contacting the employer unless the child has SEN then I'd say a rule of thumb would be that the parent can contact the employer on behalf of the child up to the last Friday in June of Year 11. Up until this point the employer is legally bound to correspond with the parent over things like Young Persons Risk Assessments & council child employment licences. After that, it should be the young person dealing with everything.

Onepeachcrow might have confused the rule that a child who is still at school (so below Year 11) must be given two consecutive weeks off per year during the school holidays.

Of course your DC could quit and go on holiday but it won't help instill a solid work ethic, just quitting whenever there's something else they'd rather do

And why shouldn't they? It's a pocket money job anyway, not some high-end career.

@Soigneur and how would the 16-year-old get to work if parents aren't there to take them?

My point is that yes, some people will be taking annual leave, and permanent staff obviously get priority, but a 16 year old only working 8 hours is not going to make a huge hole in the rota, and in fact would be a valuable member of staff to cover gaps in the rota caused by many permanent members of staff wanting leave at the same time. It is also not about not taking a job seriously -if the 16 year old didn’t take it seriously they wouldn’t have bothered to apply for leave and just wouldn’t have turned up for their shift - it is about an employer using some common sense and recognising that at 16 decisions are made by a young persons family over which the young person has no control.

This is an excellent post .

Are we really starting the whole "keep their noses to the grindstone " and the attitude of " owned by the company" as a 16 year old with a p/t job. Start the conditioning young it seems

There is no way a 16 year olds 8 hour a week retail job would dictate my family's holiday plans. It's madness. As have been the posts suggesting it would be wrong to quit, it'll leave a problematic gap in the CV etc. Fuck that.

Did I miss a post where the OP said that DC was reliant on lifts to get to work? If so that's obviously a problem.

walk, bus, taxi, train, cycle - lots of options,

And a taxi may cost money (and more than they earn possibly), but it’s an option they may have to consider if all else fails. Part of the working world.

OP has said they need to take the 16 year old due to rural location.

If it's during the summer holidays, they will have been booked up months ago. There's only so many holidays they can allow without being short staffed. It doesn't matter if it's 8 hours or 38, there's a limit to the amount of holidays which can be approved.

This 100000%

I voted YABU because they're 16 and at that age they are more than old enough to be left on their own, for a month if not for 11 days. Wtf is with people these days? At 11 years/12 years old many of us were preparing dinner after school before our parents got home. If they cannot be left home for 11 meagrely lousy days, you've failed as a parent. At 16, I'd love to be left at home than go with the oldies on a holiday.

@Soigneur @Riverlee The OP has said that the only way their child can get to work is if they take them due to the rural location they live in.

You don't have a gap in your CV at 16, what a ridiculous thing to say. Many 16 year olds don't even have a job.

And yet this would not be a problem if the company employed permanent staff and paid them appropriately. There's a reason a company relies on 16 year old staff doing 8 hours a week - cheap labour. If you want to run a business properly and for it to function properly you have to pay more otherwise, yes, you'll get problems like this. 🤷‍♀️

Isn’t this quite short notice to try to be booking off several weeks in the summer holidays? I’m not hugely surprised that they’ve said no.

I don’t know how different the rules are for employers of 16 year olds (but I have worked with some, so I know they can’t lone work, are entitled to a longer break, etc) but from a holiday point of view then I imagine that they are treated the same as everyone else. If they can’t have the holiday because there are too many people off or it’s too short notice then they can’t have the holiday- it would be unfair on the other employees (IMO) for your daughter to have the rules bent for her. If you’re old enough to have a proper, paid job then you have to more or less follow the same rules as everyone else.

If you’re fairly confident that she’ll find another job then handing her notice in is definitely an option. I think “this family holiday is very important to me, so having considered my options I would like to hand my notice in so that I am able to go” is fair enough.

I definitely don’t think you should get involved, as tempting as it may be.