Employees at one of my companies have been asking is it fair or discriminatory to give staff who go on the works christmas party 2 days extra holiday, but staff left behind have to work. Most people were invited but it is Friday to Monday over a weekend. I suspect it isn't fair but is probably legal ..... but I have been asked to try and confirm.
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So you thought what better place to get an answer to an employment law question than an accounting website?
I suspect the same as you but don't know because I'm an accountant and therefore unable to comment on legal issues.
There are any number of fair ways you could deal with the issue, the most obvious being to close the office while you hold your ridiculously long Christmas party. Of course, if you close the office anyway then maybe nobody will come to the party.
Is your Christmas party really an entire weekend? Who goes to an office party for more than a day? It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
Is not fair in so many ways- the point of it was presumably to generate workplace esprit de corps, suspect you merely created resentment and division amongst the staff.
Re legal, who can say, not sure how those "staying behind selected", none of us are lawyers (well there could be the odd poster who is also a lawyer but will not admit it) , and none of us have had sight of the employment contracts, know if the workplace has union representation etc.
If it was a case of you cannot go because of x, y, z, selection and to rub it in the bods that do get to go get a couple of days extra away from work but you get nought, then think I might be somewhat p*ssed; after the jolly all the participants return, gossip about what happened etc, those who did not get to go are cut out of both the event, the extra days away from work and the post event social interactions at work re the event; someone really did not think this through.
p.s. think the idea sounds ghastly, would personally rather be ill than go, but someone ,say like my daughter, whose life revolves around her social life with different groups of friends ex school, ex university, at work etc, yes, she is the sort of employee who ,if excluded , is going to hurt.
I took the situation to be somewhat more like in our own office here, where the Christmas party is a more modest single afternoon affair. Being an accountancy firm it's also usually on or around the first of February but that's by the by.
The way it works here is that all staff are invited and encouraged to come along but should anyone choose not to, they can work the afternoon instead, as it's always a work day.
Of course, if the situation is such that someone has to stay behind, then it would definitely seem unfair, though I have no idea if it'd follow that it was therefore illegal.
Like in the Dead Parrot Sketch "the illegality don't enter into it", the fact is it surely is being run to foster staff goodwill etc but has all the ingredients to achieve the exact opposite.
Is the problem that some people weren't invited? or that some prefer not to go to the event but would like to take a couple of days holiday instead?