Holiday abroad and work. Are you allowed?

[OnceUponACat]

Has your employer forbidden you to go abroad? To a non 14 day isolation country?
Can they even do that?

@Onceuponatime funnily enough, the Government!!

Sorry my reply was to Onceuponacat’s question:
don’t get how they can enforce it though. I really don’t. If the gov guidelines are that one can travel then who can tell you that you can’t?

I’m a public servant and it was an edict issued to all civil and public servants this week.

What was?

Would you be so kind to link me to this edict please?

The company I work for did similar prior to lockdown. There were several people with Italian ski holidays booked who were told they basically weren't allowed to go, unless they were going to take an extra fortnight of leave after. Official advice wasn't to isolate unless you had symptoms at that point. Luckily (for them, at least), italy locked down before departure dates, so they didn't loose money.

I think before lockdown my employer said that if you visited a high risk area you had to tell them and stay at home for two weeks. It wouldn't make much difference to me as I am working from home anyway.

I think it's fair enough if eg you were visiting a high risk area in the US. That said, you have to quarantine for high risk areas anyway. I don't think it's unreasonable for employers to take the view that it should be on your time not theirs if you can't WFH. You could go somewhere else.

But if the employer is saying you can't go in and there is no quarantine eg if you came back from Germany, then you should be paid for the time they are excluding you from your workplace. That's their decision.

Didn’t the government say that one CAN travel to certain countries without quarantene and to others with and others not at all?

That is the last I heard. What secret edit they have published that we do not know of.

Edict*

Ours have said they will honour it if precooked and facilitate working from home for the two weeks, if not you have to use annual leave for the quarantine period as well as the holiday.

@cologne4711 yes my point exactly. If I were to want to go to the US it would be reasonable that the isolation is on me and that the trip would have to be approved in a way: going to see family is one thing, going to Orlando another I guess.

But going to a non isolating country should not have any punishment and if they want you to isolate then it should be on them.

@rubydoobydoo

Ours have said they will honour it if precooked and facilitate working from home for the two weeks, if not you have to use annual leave for the quarantine period as well as the holiday.

There is NO quarantine period

www.gov.ie/en/publication/63027-faq-for-the-public-service-on-non-essential-travel-overseas-14th-july-2020/

We've got no problem going abroad but we have to quarantine for 2 weeks when we come back regardless of where we've been.

[quote OnceUponACat]@Aragog yes they ask for proof of booking.[/quote]
I don't understand how they can demand proof of booking for annual leave, surely you could just take annual leave and stay at home and have local day trips if you wanted to or go and visit friends/family in UK. How would you have a booking for that?

Proof of flights’ booking

Basically if you have booked al to go abroad they can cancel it because they cannot gove you time off to isolate

@BiddyPop ireland? I should have been clearer. We are in the UK. No such thing exists.

@OnceUponACat

Basically if you have booked al to go abroad they can cancel it because they cannot gove you time off to isolate

I'm interested in how the employer will know what everyone is planning to do with their annual leave? They have no right to know this and they absolutely cannot dictate what you cannot can't do whilst on said leave.

I don’t think I’dbe writing here if the uk gov had issued that. The whole point is that the UK gov has NOt done so.

@gotothecooler my point exactly.

If you travel to a country with no FCO restrictions or quarantine period on return, how can an employer impose additional conditions on you. I’ve no problem working from home after a holiday but I wouldn’t be taking further annual or unpaid leave.

How would an employer know whether I’d been to France or Falmouth for my holiday?

The want to know. You have to tell them if you are going away and in that basis they can approve your AL or not or cancel it even, if wfh is not possible and they can’t afford to have you not working.

That is why I am saying that is all not right. They can’t ask you and they can’t put those rules in place. On which ground? Plus people will lie, but if you lue it can bring dismissal.

Sounds a bit dictatorship to me...

I can see both sides of this. Obviously, they can't tell you where to go or not to go. But they can decide who to let into their buildings. If they have vulnerable staff members, is it fair to expect them to sit next to a colleague who spent the weekend clubbing on the strip at Magaluf?

The rule is not to punish people for travelling, it is to make the workplace as safe as possible for everyone else. Does anyone actually trust the government to do that? Employers are going to make their own judgements, just like everyone else.

The obvious answer would be to allow working from home.

If someone can’t go on holiday due to actions which would be taken by their employer, is that employer going to refund the costs of the holiday as insurance won’t pay if there are no longer any FCO restrictions.