Sexism and Bullying by Employer during COVID-19 Pandemic

Diamandis

I really don't see how this is sexist or bullying in the slightest. If any employee wasn't able to come to work due to childcare then enquiring about the other parent looking after the children seems reasonable. It's unfortunate you don't have childcare available but the employer need him back in the office. 

[Deleted User]

WFranklin71 said:

I thought this was meant to be a support forum. The sarcasm and criticism is uncalled for. 

Subjective.
Without critique and constructive criticism advice isn't going be best conveyed; sugar coating responses doesn't help anyone, we live in a tough world and telling it like it is often allows others to view their situation from a different perspective.
No more, no less. 🤷‍♀️😏

haras_n0sirrah

I can sympathise - my husband returned to work and within 2 days it was clear that trying to homeschool and look after kids (7 yr old and 4 yr old), do everything at home and my work full time just wasn't working
In our case my husband handed in his notice and will be a house husband until the schools return to normality 
my husband earns much less than me so it was a clear decision to make albeit not the one we would have chosen but there you go.

Semple

I do think the government need to put out some guidelines for these situations. There's going to be tens of thousands of families out there where schools haven't opened for their children yet, and both parents having to balance work around it. 

Some of the obvious proposals would be shift working, i.e. rather than working 9am-5pm, you could have one parent start at 5am-1pm and the other start at 1pm-9pm. Or rather than doing 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, you could do 6h40m a day for 6 days a week. 

EssJayD

Guidance remains to work from home if you can.  Now, its only on this forum that people fall back on "the law" without understanding that in EL relying on the law isn't always best, for example there are lots of 'best practices' in HR that aren't the law, yet plenty of tribunal judges will decide that an action, whilst lawful, was unfair, so will side on the claimant.

Although, this actually IS covered in law - the HASAWA in fact.  A workplace risk assessment needs to be carried out, and the core principle of any RA is what actions can be taken to reduce the risk the most if it cant be reduced to zero.  Where people CAN work from home (e.g. no practical issues), then the risk can indeed be reduced to zero, so that is the action that should be taken.  Now again some belligerent, old fashioned (i.e. ones I'd never work for as I'd always be busy sweeping up their mess!) employers will cling on to the word 'should' and will say "ahh gotcha!!  Should is not must", however as I say in EL its not as clear cut as that.

You'll be better posting on a forum where people know a bit more about the nuances of EL to be honest.  Although that being said, the rubbish employers as above do rely on people generally not wanting to kick up a fuss, and it is true that if an employer wants an employee out, they can make that happen eventually, so it depends on what future your husband sees at this company as to what level of fuss he kicks up.

EssJayD

(I should say in my experience of forums generally, Im sure there are others that are the same as this one.  Obviously EL and HR etc related ones don't take this line,  we'd be in tribunals all day long if we did!  No thanks!)

Potbellypig

Semple said:

I do think the government need to put out some guidelines for these situations. There's going to be tens of thousands of families out there where schools haven't opened for their children yet, and both parents having to balance work around it. 

Some of the obvious proposals would be shift working, i.e. rather than working 9am-5pm, you could have one parent start at 5am-1pm and the other start at 1pm-9pm. Or rather than doing 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, you could do 6h40m a day for 6 days a week. 

I think more families need to be looking at what they can do to be flexible and meet the needs of their workplace and balance looking after children. Some proposals like you suggest there are great and I can imagine tens of thousands are implementing similar into their 'new life'. Unfortunately, I'm sure there are tens of thousands that are liking this new working from home malarkey and would like it to stay in its current form. That's probably why when you get posters like OP probably quite innocently looking for advice, find that posters aren't so accommodating in their responses.
If OP wants this to work then they've got to be looking at ways to be really flexible to make it work. 

hb2

OP, you said that you can't send your child/ren to childminders, but they are now allowed to have children in their homes again.

dunstonh

The tone of responses is often set by the tone used in the original post.

So, posting about sexism and bullying when there has been no such thing is obviously going to generate terse responses.  

Ultimately, employers are going to learn a lot about their staff in this period and will remember that for the future.  So, its up to the individual how difficult they want to be and how much they value their career path.

[Deleted User]

haras_n0sirrah said:

I can sympathise - my husband returned to work and within 2 days it was clear that trying to homeschool and look after kids (7 yr old and 4 yr old), do everything at home and my work full time just wasn't working
In our case my husband handed in his notice and will be a house husband until the schools return to normality 
my husband earns much less than me so it was a clear decision to make albeit not the one we would have chosen but there you go.

The sarcastic long post I saw wasn't constructive criticism, it was picking at somebody else's situation for their own enjoyment.