Never allowed to take leave on a Friday

[Rorous]

There are 4 people in my team and one of whom doesn’t work Fridays. For this reason I am never allowed to take a Friday as annual leave and I find it absurd. Even when I request a week off I am being asked to work on a Friday! I’m wondering whether I am being unreasonable and should just simmer down, or kick up a fuss with my line manager… advice please?

Just to add, there are no meetings/pieces of work planned for these days. I’m just there “in case something happens” and I have never been called upon for anything urgent in my 3 years of working here.

Your work is not legally allowed to prevent you taking your annual leave. This would fall into that category. I can understand them refusing if you said I want to take every Friday off for 20 weeks as your leave but it is not unreadable to stop you taking a 2 week holiday or having the odd long weekend

Call in sick

I would take sick on a few Fridays just to test the system!

It's perfectly legal. As long as you receive the minimum number of days off per year your employer can dictate exactly when you take holidays if they want to. It used to be common practice when factories closed down for a period of time.

Companies can refuse any annual leave bookings they want to. Obviously if they were stopping all days permanently that wouldn't be legal, but as long as employees have the minimum holiday allowance available to them, employers can refuse days.

Only things you can do are, play the game and be sick those days, get a new job, or become self-employed and contract to them.

HR is always on the company's side and won't do shit in most cases.

That's bonkers. Why not pyt in for a whole week, a bit in advance, and when your manager says no suggest you train someone else because you WILL be off that whole week.

So, I know you've contacted hr, but you'll be lucky to get anything positive unless youve gone on the attack. They are employed to protect the company from the employee. Unfortunately some of this is difficult to help with from the outside as we don't have your contract or her contract or the employee handbook..
However due to there always being a chance that you are off ill legitimately on a Friday, they cannot force you to always work Fridays. You need family holidays / breaks, compassionate leave, emergency leave.... if they allowed someone to drop to 4 days a week then that's their issue, your manager needs to identify the risk and where there is a legitimate single point of dependency on a Friday it means that your manager should be having someone else available to do the work as your backup. I would suggest that you become very firm with HR and explain that this has only occurred since you returned to work after maternity leave and you feel that as that's the only thing which changed you are being treated differently.

That is a very narrow requirement of some financial services companies - in fact the only reason I know it exists is from MN!

It's not required in the overwhelming majority of jobs. I am very glad I've not worked anywhere like that to be honest - I'd hate being told I have to waste a week's holiday when I only need one week at one time. I also wonder how you enforce it these days with remote working and everyone having phones and laptops etc.

However, if people want to take two weeks off, they should be able to. And they should certainly be able to take Fridays off.

Not necessarily. In my sector we are required by the authorities to take one week consecutive days of per year or the employer is fined.
the employer can restrict times like it’s nearly impossible for some departments to take time off over Christmas but they can’t prohibit a full week off.

I don't think having to take a pay cut/part time hours as the only way to get Fridays off is favouritism myself, more an expensively drastic solution.

Fuck that with bells on!

What of you wanted a two week holiday to Spain? Are you meant to pop back on Fridays?

Bloody ridiculous

Does your manager have the same restriction? Do they take leave on Fridays?

Hopefully HR can intervene.

That's nuts. What would they do if you were off sick or what do they do when you are off sick? I bet they get on just fine. I would take up a level.

It seems odd to me if it is lawful to insist that someone's annual leave has to be taken in dribs and drabs and they never actually get a decent length of time off.

But I found a case where someone worked Monday to Saturday, and because there was rarely any work to do on a Saturday their employer required them to take leave on a Saturday so they effectively lost a load of leave!

It seems like it is lawful, or at least, has never been tested.

I only work Tues-Thurs and there’s never any issue with the person I work with taking holiday on Mon/Fri. Because that would be unreasonable.

Absolutely ludicrous.
And unhealthy.
A solid two week holiday from work and completely tuning out of it is essential to mental health for a lot of people.

The boss is taking the piss.

My manager did this to me, so I became petty and made Monday my NWD. Take it to HR

Thats crap op. My husbands place are good once you give a bit of notice. I temped in a builders he was awful zero flexibility for a day off. I work elsewhere now

That's insane. How do you book summer holidays? Does this mean you can never book a full week off work, apart from for the Easter weekend?! I'm sure that's against all sorts of employee rights.

Seems unfair. HR is the best way to go but a slow process.

Clearly your manager needs to train up the other 2 in your team so you can have the day off. I can understand not all 4 could be off at the same time, but if there are others in your team, they need to be able to pick up the work

In Germany there is a law where you are entitled, your employer is required by law, to take at least one break per year of two full weeks.

Don't you have anything like that in the UK?

tbh if your employer is being a dick, you need to find a new job.

don't call in sick but have a meeting about increasing your salary and make it a good chunk more that you want on account of being absolutely indespensible.

That’s absolutely ridiculous. So you couldn’t take say 2 weeks of A/L because you’d be required to work the two Fridays of those weeks?
what happens when your sick or need to take emergency leave?
I’d be seeking advice from the Union and I’d be putting in a grievance about it. If the grievance wasn’t taken seriously I’d be searching for another job.
Poor you!