Training courses

[Mummy8916]

I work permanent night shift and work opposite shifts to my partner. He works dayshift for childcare purposes. We have a 2 year old and literally no support network. We don't have anybody at all to help us out with baby sitting, our families live too far away. When I went back to work after maternity leave 15 months ago I was really clear in explaining my situation and he seemed supportive at the time. Most of our training is done on zoom calls but we do have the occasional in house training. All these times are through the day and ai cannot attend them because I have my daughter. My partner works until 4pm so if the training was later which does sometimes happen I can obviously attend. My manager is now saying he was not fully aware of my childcare situation, threatening me with disciplinary action and making out I am frustrated about doing any training at all which is absolutely not the case. Where do I go from here please?

There isn't a straightforward answer to this. What does your contract say about attending training / work at other than your working periods? But in the end I suspect it would come down to whether the training was necessary for the job. If it is then it is going to be difficult to get around that, so it could become a frustration of contract dismissal in that you cannot maintain the training to do the job. Regrettably, your childcare is not their problem. If they can substantiate an argument that the training is required, and that it is reasonable to expect you to have some flexibility in terms of attendance, then they would have grounds to dismiss. Is there a possibility that your partner could take some occasional leave to do childcare? This is a joint problem, not a "mum" problem.

It may be worth asking how the training times fit in with your statutory right to an eleven hour daily rest break between one day's work ending and the next day's work starting?

Do they ask all the day shift workers to get up in the middle of the night to do their training? If not why not?

Your manager is a dick and should be treating night workers better.

Additionally, if you are a 'night worker' (go on .gov for definition) you can not work, on average, more than 8 hours, in a 24 hour period.

EmmaMaria
Do you have any law or case law to support this. I disagree, it's an "employer" problem.

If online, could the training courses be recorded for you to complete during your normal working times?

This is what I was wondering.

Surely everyone who has worked through the night, then needs to be asleep the next day. Regardless of childcare (which I agree, isn't the employers issue), how are all the other staff doing training when they should be sleeping ?