Employer changed computer passwords

[scoobysnac]

I am currently on mat leave due to go back in the new year.I am having problems with my employer who is refusing to let me take my annual leave as it carries over into the new year.

Unfortunately i think this is just a rouse to actually make me hand my notice in. There are a number of things that happened before i went on mat leave. My employer hired someone permanent for my job and kept on saying she did not want to hire any more women....only men.

anyway- the issue i have is that i can normally remotely access my work emails from home, I have done this all year. However, since a couple of weeks ago it appears my password has been changed so i cannot obtain access. I had asked about carrying days over and they said no. I then went into my work emails to see if any email had been sent to all staff and i managed to get access. A week later i could not. I have been employed for 5 years and the login's never changed as it costs company money.

I am fully aware this is in my employers right. however my question is as my employer has cancelled/changed my login could this been construed as them planning for me not to return- or knowing that i wont after the way i have been treated?

It's certainly intimidating behaviour. I hope you've got a diary of events as I'd recommend speaking to your union rep/lawyer about this.
Best of luck!

Have you asked about doing "Keeping in touch" days.

I'm pretty sure they can't insist you do them but I'm not sure whether you can insist on doing them if they say it is not workable.

It is something I would look into though if I were you as then it puts a shot across their bows showing that you WILL be coming back, want to keep in touch etc etc.

If you are back in the office doing keep in touch days you'll have to be given the password won't you.

Do you have any work friends who would be prepared to let you have the password ?

Don't use someone else's password - that's a sackable offence!

I agree with OMG construct a situation where you need to contact IT to solve your login issue.

Put everything in your diary and contact professional assistance.

It is, of course, not intimidating behaviour if the problem is that you've been locked out due to too many attempts with the wrong password, either because you typed it wrong (caps lock on, for example) or because someone else tried to get in to your account.

I'm amazed it costs your company money to change passwords. For most email systems it costs nothing.

A tutorial titled:

I Forgot Computer Password - How to Reset or Find Lost Password

from www.windowspasswordrecovery.net/article/forgot-computer-password.html
has helped me much when I lost my computer login password! I opted for its suggestion of DIY a password disk with Windows Password Recovery Basic finally to solve my problem!

What is your employer saying regarding your annual leave? You can't take AL while on ML, but you should be able to tack it on to the end of your ML:

''If a woman is unable to take all of her annual leave in the leave year due to being on maternity leave she must be allowed to carry it over. The European Court of Justice in the Gomez case (see LGE Advisory Bulletin 483) held that a woman must be able to take the annual leave that she is entitled to at a time outside her maternity leave. Although in most cases this should be possible without having to carry leave over, where a woman is unable to take her annual leave before she starts her maternity leave due to the early birth of her child or pregnancy-related sickness absence, for example, or where a woman's maternity leave overlaps with the annual leave year to a signicant extent, exceptions should be made to carry over policies to allow women to carry the remaining period of leave into the next leave year''

Not sure about the password thing

If the computer system is provided so you can carry out work functions, then removing access is both normal and permissible for periods when staff are not working (usually longer absences such as MATL, secondments and sabbaticals).

Catching up with the workplace can be handled by a KIT programme or in a return-to-work package. Those are the things you need to find out about now.