Parental Leave

[IcanthelpthewayIam]

Ok for those posties who have children and are looking for a little bit extra leave in the summer or at the easter holidays, here is a little guide on Parental Leave

Firstly and quite importantly, Royal Mail do not pay you for this type of leave,

Next its a statutory right so it is illegal for royal mail to deny you it (though they can delay when you take it)

You are entitled to a total of 18 weeks leave PER CHILD from the childs birth till they are 18 years old

You are entitled to take upto 4 weeks of that leave EVERY YEAR until the 18 weeks is used up

The leave must be used up in blocks of complete weeks, ie not odd days here and there

You must have worked for Royal Mail for a year and also be named on the childs birth certificate before being able to take this type of leave

You must give 21 days notice before the intended start date and must confirm the start and end dates, it doesnt have to be in writing unless royal mail request it which they are entitled to do, however it is a good idea to create a paper trail and put it in writing should any issues arise

Royal mail can delay when taking your leave, they must be able to show a significant reason, ie it will cause a serious disruption to the business, it would be hard to argue that one postie being off makes a serious disruption in anything bigger than a SPDO

If Royal Mail do delay your leave they must explain why in writing within 7 days of the original request, they must suggest a new start date for it within 6 months of the original start date and they can not change the amount of leave requested

They can not refuse the request if its made at the time to cover the birth of a child. so if you request it to start to cover the first 4 weeks after birth (for the guys it means upto 6 weeks including paternity leave) it can not be refused.

The below website gives you more details on it

https://www.gov.uk/parental-leave/overview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If they can get part timers to cover your hours and still be under 39 hours it costs your manager nothing to cover your leave as your unpaid, it may create him some headaches trying to manage it, but hey that is what he is paid to do at the end of the day

Now is the time to start putting your requests in for the summer, remember we currently have an agreement allowing summer staffing, This is to allow extra leave during the summer months not to cover for absence and sickness, its a different part of the same agreement that covers that, so your dom is probably planning on using lapsing during the summer months to cut down on his overtime and help his budget, lets use this agreement to help with our work life balance and not his budgets balance

Lastly again yes it is unpaid leave but for some that is not a problem and its better to know about these types of leave than to not know about them

[Justanotherstar]

Good to know, my original holiday was turned down so I had to book the week after (despite already having the holiday booked) I was just going to phone in sick (i'm only 1 day a week so not sure why I wasn't allowed to take the time I wanted)

[daveyeff]

one lad in our office has 7 kids.

[IcanthelpthewayIam]

one lad in our office has 7 kids.

so that's upto 28 weeks unpaid leave in a year plus best part of 6 weeks annual leave, would be worth just putting a request for it all in one go just to see Doms face

[Nicnak80]

How do you actually apply for this, I cant find any form or anything. I already this is going to be refused if I just do this via email to my manager. I also asked RM HR customer service about this twice and they both gave me the incorrect information, one denied it existed and said I will have to use annual leave, the other said I'm referring to emergency time off special leave. They were both clueless.

[postslippete]

How do you actually apply for this, I cant find any form or anything. I already this is going to be refused if I just do this via email to my manager. I also asked RM HR customer service about this twice and they both gave me the incorrect information, one denied it existed and said I will have to use annual leave, the other said I'm referring to emergency time off special leave. They were both clueless.

Try these forms.

https://www.cwu.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... port-1.pdf
https://www.cwu.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... de-1-1.pdf