A RECENT appeal on an employment tribunal decision could have major repercussions for working parents. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has ruled that parental leave can only be taken in blocks of one week or more.
It follows the case of a father disciplined for not working on a day that he had asked to take off as parental leave. His employers had refused the request on the ground of insufficient staff cover. The man went to a tribunal, which found in his favour. However, the employers then appealed.
Parental leave was introduced to give any employee with at least one year’s continuous employment, 13 weeks of unpaid leave in the first five years of a child’s life, with up to four weeks in any one year.
One might think that parental leave was designed to be truly family friendly and help parents to take the occasional day off (for example, to check out a nursery) as well as apply for week-long chunks. The matter is, in fact, not resolved as the case is now going to the Court of Appeal but Ashurst, the employment lawyers, warn meanwhile that where the childcare commitment was anticipated, the employee will be expected to arrange childcare, take annual leave or take a full week’s parental leave.
For unforeseen emergencies, where an employee needs to take a day off, it may be possible to take unpaid time under “dependant’s leave”. This gives employees the right to take a reasonable amount of unpaid time, regardless of how long they have been with an employer, to deal with an emergency.
Advertisement
However, it would be worth checking what your employer counts as one — so far there have been too few tribunal cases to give sufficient guidance.