Losing my job because I'm a parent

[Luaper]

Since the C-19 pandemic began I have felt that the 'new normal' is likely to include a disadvantage to parents. My employer made an early decision not to furlough any employees and offered parents the option to cut their working hours - but the expectation is still there that the same amount of work as a full time employee is delivered. As such, over the past 4 months I have worked every evening including weekends to keep up whilst still trying to give my primary age school children some structure / home school in the day and normality and fun at the weekends. It has however been pointed out at work that I am less effective than my colleagues without children because I have too many distractions and answer emails at inconsiderate times of the day.

At present that are the following protected characteristics under employment law (set out in the Equality Act); age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. I think that parenting of young children should be added to this list and would ask the reader to sign the petition below.

Ask yourself this - if you were an employer would you employ a parent knowing that whilst C-19 circulates there will be frequent school closures that mean the individual has to quarantine for 14 days? And that whilst they are quarantining they will be looking after children which will mean that they cannot effectively work from home. At present there is little to prevent employers discriminating against parents in redundancy programmes and those same individuals may find it hard to find a new job. This has a serious knock on impact on families and children and is why parents as a group need this enhanced employment protection.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/319813

I agree with you, except schools having the odd snow day or childcare arrangements falling through are short term and there are solutions to explore eg other childcare.

WFH with no childcare hasn't been short term, and the usual solutions of alternative childcare haven't been available since March for many families.

People can't 'just find something to works for them' during a global pandemic. I don't agree with the premise for OP's petition, but it's correct to say that it's on the whole harder to wfh with young children than it is with slightly older or grown up ones, SEN/disabilities also included in the 'it's harder' category of course.

I know I'll get my head bit off here, but parents need to make alternative plans/ be prepared to change their lifestyle for their children, who are the most important people in our lives.

Of course nobody knew there was going to be a pandemic, but it's always a possibility along with recession, redundancy, repossession, war, famine, etc. We don't expect any of them but maybe we should.

Plenty of my generation didn't have childcare (not available in all areas), no support network, couldn't afford available childcare, no option to wfh.
So we did without, lived accordingly and got on with living how it was possible to live.
You can't always have what you want, even ito a job.

Um, exactly what do you think parents (or anyone else for that matter) should have in place to prepare for the eventuality of a global pandemic, war and famine as well as the more common occurrences of recession, redundancy and repossession?

Make sure they can live on one wage or work opposite shifts, not have debt, live in a smaller house, cheaper area, not move away from support network. Rather than trying to sort it when the shit has already hit the fan.
Was guilty of some of this myself btw, we moved from support network, not the best decision at the time, but you live and learn whilst getting on with the situation you find yourself.
You find a way to survive, rather than moan about how it should be/ what you want it to be.

Agreed @Devlesko, but apparently self responsibility isn't cool anymore. It's not even though things you listed, but just general redundancy, injury or illness as well.

@christinarossetti19 the difference is, if a person is off sick for three or four months, the employer isn’t expected to pay the employee. So the company can (often) afford to pay a temp. The OP wants to be paid by the employer while not working (or not working to the required level), so the company can’t redeploy the cash flow.

If you employ a builder to complete a job, but he comes back and says sorry, I’ve got to look after the kids forcing you to employ a second builder, you don’t pay twice - you pay the builder who completes the work.

If the OP cannot make arrangements they can’t expect their employer to be their own personal charity

Employing a builder is a one off contract. You agree at the outset schedules of payment etc. If a builder doesn't turn up, you're at complete liberty to give the work to someone else.

An organisation taking on an employee is a completely different situation.

OP doesn't sound like she's expecting her employer to her own personal charity tbh. She sounds like she's tried to fulfil their expectations of producing the same amount of work on reduced hours, but not as successfully as if she hadn't had children at home, and is aware that parents are vulnerable in the current situation of redundancies/recession with the likelihood that schools may be closed for periods into the autumn term and beyond.

Devlesko so many families can only dream of somewhere secure to live, let alone a house, and not have debt. Honestly, things are so different for younger people now than when housing was affordable and social housing was fairly plentiful.

And no generation has been in the situation of having schools and childcare closed for months before. You're not comparing like with like at all.

@canigooutyet you asked How will parents be discriminated against in terms of redundancy?

Given the potential for the recession to worsen, employers will have hard decisions to make about the size of their workforce. This is likely to be against a backdrop of frequent school closures where working parents will be asked to quarantine for 14 days if there is a COVID case in their child's school bubble.

To put this in context, I think that the average size of a primary school is about 1,000 pupils. When compared with the current COVID infection level across the population of 1-2 per 1,000 this will mean that statistically there will be at least one person with COVID at a school and therefore at least one year group in quarantine at any one time.

As there is really no end in sight to COVID circulating the globe in the next 12-18 months, working parents can expect regular intervals of quarantine and being asked to juggle home school and home working. This will pose difficulties for dual earner / single parent families and for some will mean they ultimately lose their jobs.

The request for parenting to be a protected characteristic is not made so that parents can do less work it is so that employers can't make blanket decisions about making parents in their business redundant (i.e. being a parent can't be the only reason that someone's employment is being terminated).

@Parker231 The OP’s post sounds like parents of young children should have protection from redundancy regardless of whether their role is needed in the future of the business.

No and that is not how the equality laws work.

All that will happen is that some employers, given the choice between a man of whatever parental status and a woman of whatever parental status of childbearing age, will choose the man because a) men are less likely to be impacted by childcare issues (unfair nut true) and b) women are more likely to be impacted by maternity leave + parental leave + child illness + lowered productivity in covid times

If you have a choice, who would you choose?
the person who is going to be around less during working hours and appear to be messing you around.....or the person who can do their hours

There is no reason why the mothers employment is more significantly impacted by being a parent than the fathers. Parenting is joint. If children need to go to a doctors appointment or a parent taking time off work when they are ill, parents need to take it in turns.

Your answer makes no sense.

Schools shouldn't be a consideration when looking at redundancy this isn't allowed. What would be looked at is basically is that person value for money and if not see ya.

Before the company starts doing it, they ask for volunteers.

You do realise you cannot be sacked because you are a parent. You can be sacked for not doing your job, and regardless of any protected rights, if it's done lawfully tough shit you are sacked.

We have these rights in place to begin with.

What should not be a protected right is that your boss and colleagues shut up and put up with less work, same pay because "parent"

And yea schools aren't open at the moment, but why should they be, they aren't there for childcare. Instead parents could create their own little childcare bubble now.

Every person has the right to ask for flexi working. If that can be done in the benefit of the company, they usually do. Things like reasonable adjusts are another option. Companies can only give so much allowance with absences because this costs them money. Companies will give time off to arrange emergency childcare or unpaid leave, what more do you want them to do?

And just out of curiosity, all this time off from work to take care of ill children etc, would parents still be paid by the companies?

This thread is a vivid example of why the developed world’s population will be an ageing population, complete with the severe consequences, in the next three to five decades.
Parenthood is about as much a choice as religion or nationality. Since the childcare system is so broke and expansive, and since women are already at a huge disadvantage and do majority of childcare and unpaid work in homes, OP has a sex discrimination issue.
A huge number of employers have found a way around this to dodge the system. If they want to get rid of you, they WILL get rid of you and the law be damned. Seen far too many cases of this happen to women.

And yea schools aren't open at the moment, but why should they be, they aren't there for childcare. Instead parents could create their own little childcare bubble now.
If ^ this isn’t a voice of privilege, I don’t know what else it could be.

@christinarossetti19 The petition now has 87 signatures btw.

Thanks - just came across this no government petition on the same issue with 17,000

www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/coronavirus-nobody-should-lose-their-job-because-their-kids-school-is-closed

@canigooutyet you say Schools shouldn't be a consideration when looking at redundancy this isn't allowed

But the point is it is allowed. There is nothing currently to stop an employer targeting parents in redundancy programmes provided they are not discriminating by sex.

And why wouldn't they? This thread seems to show that there is resentment to parents whether they were furloughed or not as they were not always able to contribute as fully as those without children / older children when the schools were shut for 4 months and there was no paid childcare available.

Woah there is a lot of backlash to this. It is absolutely true that having children at home during this pandemic and trying to work from home and somehow educate them has been absolutely brutal. I’m lucky that I work for a decent organisation and have good line management, but I have taken countless Teams calls with a child on my knee, had to pause them to get a snack, or worse, to dish out some discipline.

It is, in part, a sex discrimination issue, but only really because we still haven’t sorted these equality issues around pay and promotion, and plenty of women see their career opportunities dry up as soon as they use their uterus (or worse, as soon as they reach an age/stage in life where it might). If this didn’t happen for you, and you have a good solid career and manage to parent 50/50 then I’m delighted! But the reality for many women is that they are left on part time hours, picking up the household slack, because they married someone who earns more (I have identical education and qualifications to my DH but he out earns me, several times over at this point in our careers - I would be mad not to preserve that because we can’t live on my salary, but we could on his). In addition, I have a few male friends who are single parents with no other support (spousal death mostly, severe mental health issues of the mother in another). This pandemic has been brutal for them.

Ultimately, we can’t have a situation where everyone with caring responsibilities is made redundant as the economy contracts, and women are discriminated against further during recruitment exercises. That would just be plunging us back into the 1950s.

@Flamingolingo - did your DH do Teams calls with a child on his lap or break off to get them a snack? Parenting is joint, it’s not just the mothers role.

Signed.

@Parker231 - no, because he’s been back at work on site since the beginning of June. So it’s just me here, trying to somehow do both. We did/do have access to some childcare now (2 days a week) which is easier, and in the early days he did take the kids out for exercise if I was on a call, but if we are both on a call, and his is to an investor and that call might be worth £££ and mine is to my colleagues who work also for it’s easy to see how some people end up doing more childcare than others. DH’s boss has a wife who doesn’t work and plainly doesn’t see that childcare is a shared thing. That’s a hard thing to deal with...

But actually, regardless of what goes on in my house, or someone else’s house, we are talking about something bigger - a shift in attitude at a national level that makes it even more ok than it is now to discriminate against people with caring responsibilities, a push forward of the corporate need for as many hours as possible, a loss of the value of family time, and the idea that you can have children and make a meaningful contribution to society as an employee too. It’s a slippery slope

if I was on a call, but if we are both on a call, and his is to an investor and that call might be worth £££ and mine is to my colleagues who work also for it’s easy to see how some people end up doing more childcare than others.

That's not a sex issue though, is it? Unless you're saying all men have much more important jobs (as a lot of people's DHs seem to think on here). In honesty I would rather a petition for those with caring responsibilities which weren't an active choice get more support, even in 'normal' times they are ridiculously under supported.

I won't be targeting parents if redundancies have to be made,or indeed any other specific group,protected or otherwise
But in order to protect the business ,and accordingly the jobs and income of all staff,including me,I will need a full complement of staff back working as normally as possible at beginning of September .Fact.
If at all possible I will do whatever I can if people have specific circumstances but I would expect to see that their partner is sharing the load
And I will only be able to accommodate this for a short time and then the most I can offer will be unpaid leave

I have worked from home throughout with young kids. My husband earns more than me so did less. Classic scenario huh?

My employer was completely unsupportive. Didn’t even discuss it. We would have team meetings and discuss people’s libraries in
in the background or good books to read and mental health. Working parents? Working mothers?! Pah.

I loathe my employer now. I am on my knees and fainted with the sheer exhaustion of it. I will be looking for a new job as soon as I can (20 years maybe once the economy recovers!)