NHS employer - hassle after maternity

notanewuser

[quote=[Deleted User];64951776]'Granted' leave? Makes it sound like a favour. Its an employment contract so its an entitlement.[/QUOTE]

Therein lies your (attitude) problem.

corbyboy

[quote=[Deleted User];64951776]'Granted' leave? Makes it sound like a favour. Its an employment contract so its an entitlement.[/QUOTE]

This very succinctly sums up your attitude problem. Having annual leave is a right. Having it when you want is not a right.

slightlyconfused1

The problem is that if her date to return is April, then they can only cover her maternity leave until April. Her holiday leave has to be covered by colleagues.

They have followed guidelines and allowed your wife to add her accrued leave on to the end of maternity leave.

What they have not done is allowed her to take this year's leave immediately after that. No doubt your wife's colleagues have booked their leave and so there is no cover available.

The mistake is yours in booking a holiday before leave has been approved.

You decided what date she would return, not the nhs. You know holidays are granted only if staffing can be covered. She has been granted 7 weeks holiday.

You have nothing to moan about.

Pennywise

[quote=[Deleted User];64951824]Like I said, its within the 12 months allowable maternity period so its just a discussion on whether this is maternity of officially back to work but using accrued leave.

I don;t see what employer is gaining. She has told them she plans to physically return to work on June 8th. (which is 12 months). However, it would be preferable to officially start back April 8th and then use up all accrued leave to run until June 8th.

Either way she wont be back in work until June 8th. Whats the difference? Employer being awkward just means no more days worked but more days off when she does go back.[/QUOTE]

Massive difference.

Employer is presumably employing a replacement on a temporary "maternity cover" contract and will be able to cease their "contract" upon return of your wife, i.e. no issues with redundancy, unfair dismissal, etc etc. If, however, they need to keep the maternity cover just to cover a holiday, then that's a hell of a different ball game - the replacement suddenly gets more rights and may be harder/more costly to get rid of.

I don't know the weird world of NHS funding, but I also suspect that the holiday cover would have to come out of the departments own staffing budget, whereas maternity pay/maternity cover may well come out of a different budget or be subsidised by other grants etc.

At the end of the day, you've made assumptions, and want it all in your favour. Just because "you" don't see a difference doesn't mean that there isn't a difference to the other people involved.

Mrs_Ryan

bll78 wrote: »

S There are rules which mean you can only usually take blocks of 2 weeks at a time, and that the leave has to be spread across the year so someone doesn't try to get a month off in the middle of the school holidays and others end up having to take all there leave in winter.
.

Is there? At my work there is a nurse and an HCA from abroad who are allowed to take 4 weeks at a time so they can go home and see their families which no-one minds at all. They generally go in summer or near Christmas. Is it not just down to the individual Trust or even area?
I know my HR are red hot on holiday entitlement- I'm off long term sick at the moment and would have lost mine for this year if a sharp lady from HR who was in my sickness review meeting hadn't thought to ask my boss if I had any left before the end of March- if the manager is refusing to allow employees to take their allocated entitlement at any time then maybe it might be worth your wife having a word with them or the union about it.

Poppie68

Mrs_Ryan wrote: »

Is there? At my work there is a nurse and an HCA from abroad who are allowed to take 4 weeks at a time so they can go home and see their families which no-one minds at all. They generally go in summer or near Christmas. Is it not just down to the individual Trust or even area?
I know my HR are red hot on holiday entitlement- I'm off long term sick at the moment and would have lost mine for this year if a sharp lady from HR who was in my sickness review meeting hadn't thought to ask my boss if I had any left before the end of March- if the manager is refusing to allow employees to take their allocated entitlement at any time then maybe it might be worth your wife having a word with them or the union about it.

I worked for the NHS for many years and no member of staff were able to take more than 2 weeks off at any one time...the only exception was if someone had come of sick leave and had incurred holidays which needed to be taken.

getmore4less

[quote=[Deleted User];64943559]UPDATE

Only letting her tag 7 weeks onto the end (which is what was accrued) not 9 as planned. Took them a month to decide this.

Appreciate they're allowed to do this but, if she'd known earlier she would have just put start date back two weeks. Trouble is we're on holidays now those weeks.

Its less than 28 days (allowed by law) to start date now. I hope they're not going to be awkward and refuse to allow change now since the delay was their fault.

Best one. Wife pointed out that OK fair enough but she'd be going back and having a years worth of leave to use in 9 months so when could she have. So far manager has said, first free week is November so can let you have that. Great so only 7 more weeks to use by next April then in Dec-Mar 2015.

As I said before, this is their trick they do all the time. Refuse leave requests and then employee loses unused leave. Happened a few times with others.[/QUOTE]

Hope your new start date request was conditional on the holiday being approved so the real start date was as you wanted.

If not they could hold her to that start date.

The other thing you need to do is ASAP get ALL holiday allocated for the March 2015 holiday year end.
Can always negotiate changes later but get it allocated.
IME most NHS front line workers do most of the holidays a year in advance so they can manage the off duty.

BillJones

Yes, you want everyone to agree to your requests, irrespective of the problems it causes for them, and get all upset when you don't get things completely your own way.

Your wife's employer has bent over backwards to try to help, and yet still you want to have an (text removed by MSE Forum Team) at how horribly you've been treated.

As you say, this is sadly usual nowadays.

notanewuser

I expect they don't want her taking the 2 weeks leave she hasn't accrued because when they turn down the reduction to 10 hours a week they expect she'll quit.

Sinhanada

[quote=[Deleted User];discussion/4909114]Can't believe the grief wife is getting about maternity off NHS employer.

Plan was to end maternity and then take the leave the accrued before actually going back. Checked the policy and this is what the trust recommends! Other than that, she'd be going back to work with almost a two years leave to use in 9 months....

Other thing was she wants to go back on less hours. I though the trust were obliged to honour that but they've said no to it. Does anyone know what the laws/NHS rules are for this?[/QUOTE]

Sorry but the trust are not obliged to reduce her hours. It can be considered but is ultimately up to her line managers discretion. It will depend on if her reducing her hours would adversely affect the department or create an unfair workload on the team.