My wife's work deduct a days pay when she has to stay at home with our ill child

[DabbyBob]

Hi All.

Just looking for some advise regarding pay rights for a teacher in full time employment - she is employed by the local council and has been in her permanent position for 12years or more.

So every time that she needs to take a day off because one of our children are ill her bosses at the school will deduct a days pay. This makes things really difficult as it puts all the pressure on me to work from home... Which i will do 2/3rds of the time, but sometimes like now (away on business) i cant take the day off.

My wife tells me that its all leagal and that they are within their rights to do this. But for me it just seems so wrong when you have 12 years working there!

I guess the simple question is: is this leagal or does my wife have some rights here?

Thanks.

Seneca - yes, unpaid sick leave is legal. But we get more annual leave than in the US.

And it's generally harder to fire a European worker than a US one, and we have better maternity leave provisions. Swings and roundabouts!

We get 5 days family leave a year. But if you only work 2 days you only get 2 days.

Unfortunately when your wife is off they then need to use money to cover her.

My husband and I try to share the time off.

I can apply for paid leave as an emergency but it's at my manager's discretion. Luckily I can also work at home if I need to. I'm civil service.

After 4 days sickness absence the government will pay you statutory sick pay if you do not receive company sick pay. I wouldn't think that SSP covers a perfectly fit and able adult who isn't in work because their child is ill.

'Nobody ever thinks about the unpaid evenings you give freely or the nights you stay late or the after school sports fixtures you ferry your Y6s to. I'd say they add up to 3 or 4 days of unpaid labour./

I agree that people being forced to do unpaid work is one of the unfairnesses of the workplace that really gets on my wick. It has to work both ways. If you don't work you don't get paid. If you do work then you get paid.

I dont want to get into a teacher bashing debate about what a working day is a for a teacher. I know you all work past 4 pm and I know you all say that your holidays are unpaid and that in fact you only really get paid for term time and that it gets spread over the year.

However, most of the rest of the population believe you should work more than 9 - 5 on the days you are at school and that you do get paid for a year of work and that parents evenings and taking kids to sports events and marking books after school is part of your job on the days you work and you get longer holidays in recompense.

I don't think you should get extra paid days off as well to look after you children.

Bumppower, what do you do for chicken pox then? I had 3 with it not all starting at the same time so taking 2wks in total. We have no living family whatsoever and I do not know any sahms able to have sick children at home. Nursery and school won't have them so what do you do? I took a week and DH took a week. What else is there to do?

DrSeuss But teachers evidently can't use that leave for being with sick children. I'm just surprised by this because it was my understanding that the UK was much more employee-friendly than the US. It seems that is true generally, except for teachers perhaps. In the US, teachers get paid leave for sickness and for other personal reasons, such as caring for a sick child.

Seneca - some employers have more generous policies, but the legal minimum is that to get statutory sick pay you must have been off sick for 4 or more working days in a row. So many employers do not pay you for being off sick for 1, 2, or 3 days at a time.

I agree in principle that teachers who are too ill to work should not be expected to mark/plan, but in reality most teachers are quite keen that their classes do not have their work interrupted by a series of crappy wordsearches, videos and design-a-poster lessons, so try to set work that is at least relevant to what their students have been learning. As for marking - well, it will have to be done at some point. One of the worst things about being off sick from teaching is coming back, and having to do twice as much work for several days to try to catch up.

Th op sounds very entitled. Welcome to the real world.

True, Seneca, but teachers get enhanced maternity above the basic and more annual leave (albeit fixed days) than the statutory minimum. Soooo it's not all bad!

I imagine paid personal days are more of a US thing because of generally restricted annual leave

I'm mostly in 8-5 and eat on the job. I'm not so much talking about parents evenings as I see those as part of the job. But 2 unpaid Saturdays a year for school fayres. 2 lots of 3 hour discos a year which equates to almost another day. I took Y6 to rounders last summer and got home at 8.50 in the evening. I've also done a Saturday morning inter school quiz and an after school swimming gala. None of which is paid but all of which I give freely. I'm not saying all time if should be paid but a lot of people in the private sector who complain about teachers slack hours would never dream of working effectively 3 or 4 extra days a year unpaid. I don't think we're hard done by, it's not an issue only faved by teachers but the inability to take annual leave as cover complicates things a little.

I introduced a 5 days of carers leave policy for the org I worked for. It seemed better to be up front about it and clear. It was a charity, so it was one way of compensating for the lower pay/lack of benefits.

With any employment issues, you should act fairly across all staff. Which is where descretion can be difficult.

I think the issue for teachers is that they cannot really make that time up, like a office worker could in the evening etc.

And considerably better than minimum sick pay
www.teachers.org.uk/files/sick-pay-nut-guidance.doc

I think you are right about that, Dr. If there were no sick and personal leave, many US workers would have no vacation time at all.

I had 3 wks full pay on maternity then a further 6wks at 90% then SMP. Is that enhanced? Most of my friends in the private sector had a far better package than me.

Drseuss

Unpaid holiday.

"lot of people in the private sector who complain about teachers slack hours would never dream of working effectively 3 or 4 extra days a year unpaid."

I kept a time sheet when I first went on flexible working. For a year I did at least 4.3 days per week, often 4.5 - I was paid for 4. Plenty of people in the private sector work an extra 3-4 days per year (which is less than an hour a week) unpaid.

Makes me so grateful that we are from Australia (although living in UK at the moment).

In Aus, we get minimum 10 days mandated sick leave per year (cumulative), ALL of which can be used as carer's leave for anyone in your immediate family, which includes parents, partners, children, step children, etc. Anyone you have a caring responsibility for.

I find the UK's laws extremely out dated, and it harks back to days of one parent at home while the other works.

What about people who don't have family to help out? They shouldn't have children?

Lentil

The statutory is 6 weeks at 90% and 33 weeks at SMP. So yes, yours was enhanced. The most common offering nationally is statutory.

Look, I am not criticising teachers - I know I couldn't do the job. But all t&c's have positives and negatives - lots of jobs, like retail, don't offer the scope to work from home, which can be a downside, of course.

When I worked in the USA, I had a sickness entitlement of one day per month, which I think could be taken in blocks. Therefore, I could be off for. 12 days a year. Anything beyond this was unpaid.

We don't have the same concept of sickness leave here, so there is no transfer to dependants. My understanding is that if an employee is ill, an element of their pay is claimed back from the government. There is no such thing for caring leave. There is no fixed entitlement, so no ability to transfer.

A PP mention having a shared sickness leave for the employee and their dependants. This would be very unfair on colleagues. I have five children, and if they had been sickly, this would have meant 6x the average sickness leave for me versus a childless colleague. I don't think my colleagues should have to suffer for my large family.

I think that's quite common in a p/t contract. When I was teaching mon-wed lunchtime I never hit out before end of day wed. But not many people in the private sector would be happy if they were told they needed to work 2 full and 1 half Saturday in the coming year and not be paid for it- on top of all the extra hours they do every week.

Fwiw I.m contracted to work 35 hrs a week, but rarely drop below 50- including the whole of Sunday morning. I took a class on a residential trip last year. There is no way I'd do that again, if they docked my pay every time I had a sick child to care for.

Teachers, like anyone in employment, are paid to be at work, not supervising their own children at home. YOU need to be more progressive OP, not her employer.

ABetaDad I agree that teachers shouldn't be paid to look after their children. Unless its the first time in something ridiculous like 10 years and it's a real emergency.

However: we should work longer than 9-5? I would agree. But its a non argument really, because the reality is more like 7.30 - 5.30 with no break, and that's an easy day. A tough day would be 6.30 - 7.30pm with no break. And thats at least once a week.