Annual Leave proposal

Branch News LAS News Pay

The LAS management have written to us to propose a change in the annual leave arrangements for operational staff. 

Although we have had some discussion with the service to explore these arrangements over quite a protracted timeframe, it was disappointing to us to have received a formal proposal at 1650 on a Friday evening. 

Nevertheless, to give the background to this proposal we have had various discussions with a range of management representatives over the past 4 years on their request to explore the difficulties the current annual leave arrangements cause operational resourcing. 

This has culminated in what the LAS management have now formally proposed to UNISON for us to consult with our members on within the next 30 days. 

We plan to consult with our Branch Committee and our network of elected workplace representatives and Senior Sector reps across the LAS to accomplish this. 

The proposal will be shared at our next Branch Committee meeting on the 24th of January for discussion and we will look to agree for our response to be formulated by the feedback from members, received by our Senior Sector Reps. 

You can read the proposal in full below. We have already requested additional information from the management to support the proposal which we are yet to receive. 

It has today been agreed at a Staff Council meeting that the 30 days consultation period will begin when we receive this additional information. 

As an overview the following is briefly some of the main changes:

  • A change in the calculation of the number of leave spaces available to each group station, team or staff group from a percentage of established staff in said group to a percentage of the operational hours produced by said group on a day by day basis.  An example of this follows below for a Station Group.  The proposal is not clear whether skill level is also included as calculation.
  • Carry over of unused annual leave is currently a third of allocation and is proposed to be reduced to 37.5 hours.
  • The proposal states the Trust may allocate leave to staff in exceptional circumstances where a staff member has not requested leave in a timely manner.  There is no mention of this being undertaken in consultation with the member of staff.
  • The minimum notice for staff to make a leave application will increase from 24hrs to one week.  Applications made with less than one week’s notice will be referred to local management for consideration.

Please contact your workplace rep or Senior Sector rep to discuss and feedback on this proposal and we will highlight the salient issues raised once we have collated feedback.

Download the proposal here

 

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