Parents and employers will be anxiously wondering how they will cope as schools close due to teacher strike action.
Parents will have to stay at home to look after their children unless someone offers to stand in for them.
By law, they are allowed to take a certain amount of unpaid time off to look after their children, known as ‘ordinary’ or unpaid parental leave. However, this is only available to those with at least a year’s service with their employer.
Working from home
According to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), by law, anyone classed as an employee has the right to take time off work to help someone who depends on them (a ‘dependant’) in an unexpected event, although it is not clear whether strike action is covered.
Planned strike action isn’t necessarily an unexpected event, though schools might not know until the day who is striking and whether the school can remain open.
Reasons people might take parental leave to be with their child could be to:
- Look after them when they’re off school sick
- Attend open days or events with them
- Settle them into new childcare arrangements.
It is a dilemma for employers and workers with requests for holiday, flexible working or home working likely to be requested at very short notice, which may affect business.
It’s against the law for an employer to dismiss or treat an employee unfairly just because they have asked to take parental leave.
The employees must ask the employer 21 days before the date to start parental leave.
Flexible hours
When asking for holiday, the Working Time Regulations 1998 require employees to give twice the length of notice as the required amount of leave.
So, if an employee wants one day’s leave, they need to give two days’ notice. However, in this case, the employer may grant the time off whether paid or unpaid.
It could be that they could ask for the time to be made up at some point.
Another alternative could be working from home if that is possible for the period in question or working flexible hours out of school hours to cover the shortfall.
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