Shielding and holidays

Woody Guthrie · Post by **Woody Guthrie** » 13 Jul 2020, 16:18

This is the likely direction a successful ET would take.

There are only two options if an employer wants to choose when an employee takes their holiday, either by agreement or by giving written notice at least twice as long as the period of annual leave.

What Royal Mail will argue is that because this was pre-booked annual leave they already have an existing agreement and don't need to give notice.

However where this argument fails is in their decision to place shielding members within their sick absence provision which unless agreed otherwise by the employee renders the annual leave cancelled.

Therefore as Acas points out they should have given notice.

linpen · Post by **linpen** » 13 Jul 2020, 19:52

Postman, thanks for the reference. It all helps.

Post by **Judgee** » 13 Jul 2020, 22:21

If people working through the virus were allowed to move their holidays then fair enough you should get it back. But in my office we were forced to take them when they were booked. Why should people shielding be treated better than those that worked through this? If you had time off booked for when you were shielding it should be classed as used. Any time you did not have booked off during the shielding should not be used to make up the time you were off. This to me would be the fairest solution?

Post by **SpacePhoenix** » 13 Jul 2020, 22:41

If the whole of the shielding time is basically classed as sick, then how come people didn't get their holidays back? Normally you can't be on holiday and sick, it's either 1 or the other

linpen · Post by **linpen** » 14 Jul 2020, 12:02

Judge...you can’t be forced to take them when they are booked. You are allowed to move them. Why didn’t you see your union rep? I presume you are in the union?

luddite · Post by **luddite** » 15 Jul 2020, 11:08

luddite · Post by **luddite** » 15 Jul 2020, 11:09

linpen wrote:Judge...you can’t be forced to take them when they are booked. You are allowed to move them. Why didn’t you see your union rep? I presume you are in the union?

Move them to where! There are no spaces on our leave list, not this year, next year or any year! I would love to have the whole of July off next year but so does most of my office.

frankieboy · Post by **frankieboy** » 15 Jul 2020, 15:44

linpen wrote:Judge...you can’t be forced to take them when they are booked. You are allowed to move them. Why didn’t you see your union rep? I presume you are in the union?

Our office is down to the bare bones, chap who is on holiday next week said he would come in to help so long has could move his holiday week. Union rep, " not allowed to do that", chaps reply " stuff em then" . And yes we are in the union.

Post by **Judgee** » 20 Jul 2020, 19:48

linpen wrote:Judge...you can’t be forced to take them when they are booked. You are allowed to move them. Why didn’t you see your union rep? I presume you are in the union?

Sorry for the delayed response. As above posters have said, move them to when? We were all in the same boat. You can't move an entire block of 6 months worth of holidays into the second half of the year. To be fair I, as much as I didn't like it I can't really blame RM for doing this. But as I mentioned in my original post, is it not the fairest solution to class all holidays booked during the lockdown as used including those off shielding? Otherwise it's like punishing people for working through the pandemic is it not?