Need help with request for family friendly hours

[alysonpeaches]

My husband works for Sainsbury's online. He doesnt have set hours, but rotas are put up. Up to this summer he was doing one late a week (i.e. 10pm finish) and often working weekends. As we are bringing up our 4 grandchildren on special guardianship orders, and I am disabled, late nights are a struggle as I have to get all 4 to bed on my own. The children are aged 1-7, the eldest is autistic. Weekends are difficult as I have all 4 to myself when he is working.

This September he put in a formal request, helped by USDAW, for more family friendly hours. The ~USDAW rep said aim high, so we asked for no late finishes and every weekend off. There was a meeting, they said if he wanted to change his job to an instore role they could give him set hours, but not in the job he is in now.

If he switched roles he would take a pay cut and other terms and conditions would be worse eg no paid breaks, resulting in a longer day. He said he didnt want to take an instore role, he wanted his current job, but with family friendly hours. They didnt agree to it and sent him away to think about their offer. Then the USDAW rep went off sick, and is on long term sick. Husband was offered chance of another meeting without USDAW but said he wanted USDAW present. His management couldnt seem to accept that it was now EU Law to give employees family friendly hours as well as allegedly sainsbury's policy etc.

I have just come down with shingles as I have been really run down with having no help. I have a childminder to help during the day, but I need my husband to be home to help at evenings and weekends. I rang Sainsbury's today, asked for the Man in charge of the store, to try and get an answer, I was just fobbed off with "We are a 24 hour business" ... and a promise to speak to HR and another manager. I have pointed out that if I receive no satisfaction I will go to the press.

Has anyone any ideas on what else we can do, or where to go next?

Ok you need to take a step back here. I have every sympathy for your situation, I really do, but I think you need to be very careful as to how you handle this.

First you need to be clear about whether your husband has any rights to request flexible working due to your guardianship. I don't know the answer, the union probably will but I suspect the answer is yes but you need to be clear - not everyone can legally request flexible working.

Second you need to be clear that your husband does not have a right to HAVE "family friendly" hours, he has a right to REQUEST them. The store is obliged to consider his request and is able to reject the request on certain limited grounds. They may claim that they can't give him what he wants but have offered an alternative in the store.

Third you need to get a new rep on board from the union asap and go through their refusal grounds to see whether they are legally valid or not and look at the company's procedures to look to appeals etc. You must insist the union gets someone on this immediately (don't be fobbed off) as there may be tight time limits after which he may be barred from making another request for a while.

Fourth I would really question whether it is appropriate for you to be speaking to the store manager - he is the employee not you. I know you're only trying to help but I think you could damage his credibility on this.

And finally I would think very very carefully before "going to the press" on this. This will open up a whole new can of worms that you may not want.

Best of luck with it and I hope you get the outcome you want.

In terms of whether he has the right to ask, from this it does sound as though he probably does.

He only has the right to ask though, he doesn't have any right to flexible working as such as long as his employer give appropriate business reasons for refusing his request and follow the procedure correctly.

I totally agree with Axis, it's not appropriate for you to contact your husband's employer at all, it would be very surprising if they were prepared to speak to you and will certainly undermine his credibility at work. I would also agree that going to the press is a very bad idea and it's unlikely the press would be remotely interested in an employer refusing a flexible working request anyway.

I agree the best bet is for your husband to get on to the union and insist that someone else helps him, he can appeal the decision and anything his employer have done that doesn't follow either their own procedure or the legal procedure will help the appeal.

what exactly is his role? is it backstage in a store? fwiw it would be very very unusual for a retailer to agree to a person working NO saturdays, seeings as that is the busiest trading day in store. is his job fulfilling online orders or something else entirely?

why are his hours not set? can an agreement be agreed about this? where is he prepared to compromise? would he do sundays instead of the late night? are there early morning shifts he could do? without knowing the working set up it's hard to suggest the best option or how to put forward the best application.

I think that your husband has been badly advised by his union I'm afraid. 'Aiming high' is not a bad principle in most negotiations, but it doesn't work well with flexible working requests. The reason is that an employer only has to consider the request as made, then agree or reject it on business grounds. There is no obligation to put forward compromise proposals. A good employer often will, but if your husband has been advised to come across very hardline on his most extreme stance, they may have felt that there was no point. That would probably explain why they offered another role instead.

If the proposal has been turned down, you now need to appeal. I would get someone else from the union to help if you can. If not, as part of the appeal, be very clear the compromise that your DH would accept.

I agree with everything Flowery said (aren't you meant to be taking a break Flowery? Hope all is well with the new DS). In terms of press, I'm not sure that they'd be that interested, to be honest. A delivery driver who doesn't want to work any evenings or weekends and who was offered a store role which could fit that? It's not going to look crushing for their PA. Sorry if that sounds brutal, but I find people often have unrealistic views of what the press will find interesting. You also unleash a whole other league of battle if they are interested...

Hi Ribena, yes all going well with DS2, 2 weeks old today, am still on a break-ish, or only about on and off anyway!

Sorry for hi-jack OP.

At the next meeting it may be worth putting forward a compromise, ie what he would accept. I suggest he does this by submitting something in writing either at or before the meeting, he should keep a copy.

Also are women granted family friendly hours in equivalent roles? If yes, then a refusal of family friendly hours may be discriminatory, that is he is being treated differently than a woman would be with caring responsibilities.

Try to get some legal advice, union reps can be variable and to be fair employment law is a fairly hefty area Working Families know flexible working inside out 0800 013 0313 or [email protected].

By the way, I don't think it is a good idea to 'name' the employer in a forum, it could identify him and it is unlikely be helpful. You might want to think about asking MNHQ to remove the thread.