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.

There is also something I have noticed so just anecdotal really but a lot of the primary teachers who stick it out are married to non teachers earning far more with a far greater degree of flexibility in their jobs.

Not with the people I know and my own family. Most primary school teachers are married to other primary school teachers

Again, Lentil, many others who do unpaid overtime don't get a paid day off in thanks for their flexibility if a child is sick, especially where cover must be paid for. Teaching isn't unique in that.

Very true tbf

There aren't enough male primary staff for that to be the case, surely! Or is that since equal marriage came in?!

I'm sure that's true. Although I certainly know from friends and DH that people, especially working parents, are more likely to work for companies offering good retention policies. I'm not suggesting that teachers are worse off than everyone else just that it's a shame that so much unpaid work is expected over and above the unpaid work we do every day yet the system doesn't work the other way.
Gin talked about teachers all working to rule. I've never experienced this and I think school life would suffer dramatically if that was the case and parents would be upset at lack of extra curricular stuff and regular fayres etc.

Yes, I don't know any primary teachers married to other primary teachers. None at all.

There aren't enough male primary staff for that to be the case, surely! Or is that since equal marriage came in?!

There are quite a few however and obviously I don't know every teacher in every primary school in the uk

"If we choose to have children we should not expect employers to subsidise that. Our chilren, we look after them, our responibility, without pay. "

I disagree with this - the fact is most people are employees and parents for a large chunk of their working lives. If employers don't assist their employees in balancing their work and parental responsibilities then they are actively making the lives of their staff miserable. They can't** not employ parents as they'd have hardly any staff so need to have an ethical responsibility to support staff. Great work-life balance policies in the workplace produces a happy, motivated and productive workforce. Not supporting your employees' parental responsibilities creates a resentful and stressed workforce, which is a poor long-term business strategy indeed.

Knowing your company provides a couple of days parental leave a year and understands your need to balance dual responsibilities as an employee and parent goes a very long way, conversely a family-unfriendly management approach diminishes staff loyalty and ultimately squashes any desire to go the extra mile.

So how does parental leave work with treating child free employees fairly, given they will likely be paid similar salaries for working more days and picking up the slack where parents are off with their children? As I said earlier in the thread, that just leads to resentment.

I've heard the same argument made for letting parents have priority for having Christmas Day and school holidays off.

It can be phrased as leave for people with caring responsibilities, which benefit the many people who look after parents as they grow older, and who can have emergencies just like children.

Should that be paid leave though? I'm not opposed to people taking leave for emergencies but I don't think work should have to pay.

No one is stopping parents having the time off to look after the child. This teacher is entitled to the time. The complaint is it is unpaid. There is no reason why an employer should pay a parent to be at home and not at work every time their child is poorly.
In a school, a supply teacher then has to be paid to take their classes as well, or a cover supervisor- double whammy for the employer. If we choose to have a child they are our responsibility, not our employer's. Have the time but don't expect to be paid.

Purple, for me it evens out. We were tax payers for many years before having small children and I expect we'll both be in work for quite a few years after they no longer need us to stay home. If you crudely say a tax paying life is from 21-65, that's 44yrs. Maybe up to 15 of which you need to be able to take time off leaves about 30 where you are taking your fair share of not taking it whilst it will be offered to other young parents at work.

It only works out if you have children lentil. People who don't end up getting a poor deal if they're expected to work more days with the same pay.

We had a member of staff who had 16 days off in one year for a child who was off 5 times for approx 3 days each time. Why should we pay two weeks salary for her to stay at home with her child?
Approx £2000 + £2500 for supply and that is without the oncosts. £5000 cost to employer.

She had the time - in itself it is ridiculous for a child who was not seriously unwell. Employee has mother, MIL, sisters who do not work but she wanted to be at home. Child had colds, viruses. Emploee asked to make the time up so she could be paid. When? In a school holiday when we have no children there? Employers are not there to sudsidise employees financially. You are paud for work, all of us are, not for looking after our own children.

Lulu, that's correct of course but then should they still expect me to give up 2 or 3 Ssturdays a year and all the extra time for netball and rounders and booster classes for kids struggling to reach level 4?
And I still don't recognise your description of school life.

It does, yes. But that's like saying you only get your fair share of NI if you're ill and need the NHS regularly or have s period in benefits. I have until now been relatively healthy, thank goodness. No benefits received including tax credits and we don't get child benefit. We don't even use state schools. But it's part of living in a fair society that we pay into those systems and we just consider ourselves fortunate never to have needed them. I never consider it unfair that other shave got more out than they've paid in. I'm grateful the system is there should we ever need it.

That's not the same thing at all. If you're being employed to work a certain number of days for a particular salary and your collegue who is a parent and gets paid the same salary but works fewer days that's inherently unfair.

Again, I have no problem with unpaid emergency parental leave.

Well obviously there should be limits so that budgeting can be done. My employer just calls it "personal leave." Everyone is entitled to it. People without children use it to take care of other things.

Do people get a set number of days per year seneca? It sounds like emergency annual leave, which isn't a bad idea if people got paid for any they didn't use.

"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"

Seriously? Most offices I've worked in (large regional law firms and a lot of junior lawyers less well paid than teachers) people worked a weekend day most weeks, plus God knows how many hours on weeknights. So the idea of 3 or 4 unpaid days a year is fairly amusing. I do that each month in my voluntary stuff before you get onto all of the work stuff.

Teachers are having a crap time at the moment which I get but it doesn't help the cause at all to suggest that things are so rosy in the private sector and no one else works unpaid overtime.

Also loving the idea of 36 days being minimum holiday! That would be awesome. As would actually taking holiday that's not interrupted by hours of work and that you don't have to work like mad either side of to get back up to speed.

Everyone is working hard. It's not a teacher/not teacher, other than on MN.

Well don't do it then. Don't give up the time. Say no. Teaching will be poorer for it but that is how teaching works- always has, always will. Governments have progressively eroded the profession and teacher unions have helped them. The NAS/UWT thought they were being clever with UPS and the 21 tasks agreement. All it did was erode teachers' standing even further in the public's mind.
We can't be asked to put up a display
We can't be asked to enter data for our classes
We can't be asked to cover in our non-contact time, even if we have more than we are entitled to
We can't be asked to collect money for trips.
We can only be asked to work 1269 hours a year
We don't like appraisal
We don't like performance related pay
We can't attend more than one parent evening per year group
We can't write more than one report
We don't want to be accountable for anything

BUT we can move 3 points up UPS and earn an additional 7(I think) thousand a year with no real measure of our worth to do so.

Yada yada yada. Moany teachers.

The government have removed the teeth and claws from teacher unions. Strikes over pay? Came to nothing. Academisation has done for unions. The public think teachers have it cushy in comparison to many of our working population and all teachers are seen to do is moan. Gove finished us off as a profession. Parents see us firstly as child minders and won't support us with industrial action for that reason and they are sick of us whining about trivialities when many of them are unemployed. Teacher unions can't even agree with each other.

It can be phrased as leave for people with caring responsibilities, which benefit the many people who look after parents as they grow older, and who can have emergencies just like children.

But the problem with the above is that people with children will expect time off for both child care and elder care/spousal care. The childfree will just need the latter. It still amounts to the childed (in the aggregate) taking more time off over the course of a career than the childfree and costing employers more. It's not a question of being nice or whether or not to make people's lives "miserable" it's a question of supply and demand. There is a vast oversupply of humans right now in just about every society and every occupational field.

Perhaps when populations were lower, favoring those who produce future citizens made sense. But in the 21st century we have an excess of human labor capacity that is driving down wages and standards of living - even as technology continues to displace the need for human labor at an astonishing pace - and a planet gasping under the destructive effects of climate change. Another species is dying off practically every day, due entirely to human-caused effects. Any country can easily adjust immigration policies to import more than enough workers to keep pension schemes and such alive; no need to subsidize the production of future citizens.

Producing additional humans has become a liability rather than an asset, and there is a growing backlash (at least here in the US) at government mandates, tax policies and employer policies that continue to favor those who produce humans. Meanwhile the ranks of the childfree by choice continue to grow apace.

I think the perks and rewards in the workplace to those who have children have peaked and are only going to contract going forward. It's become a personal lifestyle choice that has to be planned, saved for and sacrificed for rather than expecting the village to pick up the tab.

And the OP here whining 'Why does my wife's school deduct a day's pay everytime she is off to look after our child?' does teachers no favours. The answer is a school is not a charity for teachers. If she is not there doing her job, she should not be paid for looking after her own child at home. It is that simple.

Seneca apologies if this has already been asked but how does the basic annual leave allowed in the US compare if most people also have up to 4 days personal leave?