You will have seen in the news that the RMT are proposing national strikes on Tuesday 21, Thursday 23 and Saturday 25 June 2022, which, if they go ahead, would effectively close down the national rail network.
Irrespective of the RMT’s reasons for calling this strike, if it goes ahead, it will have a significant impact on many businesses across the UK with employees potentially struggling to get to their places of work.
So, we are suggesting that you get ahead of this and have a plan in place. We thought we’d set out some thoughts and ideas for you.
Work from home
After 2 years of lockdowns and working from home, many workers are already set up to work from home and it will, hopefully, be relatively easy to put those measures back in place for workers whose job roles enable them to work from home.
Holiday
You may wish to give your employees who are not able to work from home, notice to take holiday. Employers have the right to give employees notice to take holiday on specific dates by giving at least double the amount of notice as time to be taken i.e. to take 1 days’ holiday you must give a minimum of 2 days’ notice. As the days of the proposed strikes are split you may give a minimum of 2 days’ notice for each day. However, remember to be reasonable and if you want to go down this route give as much notice as possible. You may also want to add a caveat that the holiday will only apply if the strike actually goes ahead. To cancel holiday without agreement from the employee you must give double the amount of notice as holiday to be taken – so again 2 days to cancel a 1-day holiday.
Car sharing
You may wish to facilitate car sharing if some of your employees normally drive to work and would be happy to give colleague(s) a lift to work. Maybe set up a group chat (e.g. WhatsApp).
Time Off in Lieu (TOIL)
It might work for employees to take the time off and make it back either before or after the days when the strike is on. We do provide you with a template TOIL policy (see below) as part of our standard suite of policies.
Unpaid leave
Some employees who can’t work from home and have no other way of getting to work, may not wish to take holiday and so they may choose to take unpaid leave – or you may say that if they don’t take holiday or use TOIL they will not be paid. If an employee does come to work, they have no right to be paid.
Remember of course that engaging your employees in this conversation is the most productive way to find a solution acceptable to everyone.
Our Support and Advice
We are always happy to debate the pros/cons, dos/don’ts with you so please do talk to us if we can help in any way, we are here to support you.
Please note, this briefing is accurate at the time of writing, it is not intended to replace advice so please do call us if you have any queries.
