News | Wednesday, 09 December 2009

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Urgent family leave extended to civil servants

A legal notice issued this week has finally made urgent family leave and parental leave applicable to workers in the government sector.
The rules were enacted in the 2003 employment and industrial laws, and then made applicable to government service in 2007, but this week were formally activated.
The first set of rules concern time off from work for urgent family reasons in cases of sickness or accident that make “the immediate presence of the employee indispensable.”
The circumstances covered will be accidents to members of the immediate family, sudden illness or sickness of any member of the immediate family requiring the assistance or presence of the employee, and births and deaths of members of the immediate family. The immediate family is defined as the husband, wife and married or unmarried children, as well as family relations up to the first degree, and whether living in the same household or not and persons having legal custody of a child.
No advance notification is required to be given by the employee except in those cases where it is possible to give at least 24 hours notice of an event which is to take place.
Employers must grant every employee a minimum 15 hours with pay every year, as time off from work for urgent family reasons.
But these hours will be deducted from the annual leave entitlement of the employee.
The employer has the right to establish the maximum number of hours of time off from work in each particular case, save that the minimum should not be less than one hour per case, unless there is the specific agreement of the employee.
The employer also has the right to demand such evidence as may be necessary to verify and confirm the request for urgent leave by the employee. The same rules apply for part-time employees.
The second set of rules concern parental leave on the grounds of birth, adoption or legal custody of children that grants three months’ care for children aged younger than eight years.
Unless prescribed in a collective agreement, the employer together with the employee may decide whether to grant the parental leave on a full-time or a part-time basis, in a piecemeal way or in the form of a “time credit system”.
In the event that the parental leave was not availed of or there is still an existing balance of parental leave, an employee remains entitled to such leave even if there is a change in the employer.
During the period of parental leave, an employee shall not, upon the resumption of duties at the workplace, be entitled to any other leave, bonuses or allowances and shall not avail himself of such entitlement which might have accrued during such period. It will be illegal for employers to dismiss employees who apply for parental leave.

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