It was announced to us that subjecting to agreement signed with the unions, staff would be required to take 1 day's leave every month from May 2009. Such monthly leaves cannot be taken on consecutive days across the months. I.e., if I take 31 May leave for month of May, there must be a break for my June's leave. If I also take June 1, it is not considered as June's monthly leave. For those whose annual leave is insufficient, they will be required to go on no-pay leave monthly.
The rational is not really explained all that well.
The main reasoning is that it is the "cover story" presented to the Board that since our business volume is down, we need measures to deal with surplus manpower company wide, and this is one way to do it without pay-cuts.
By chipping away our leaves, one possible result is get staff to take no-pay leave if they want to take long-holidays. Another target is to prevent staff accumulating leaves for long absences from work, now and in the future.
While I appreciate the move to avoid pay-cut, the problem is that the concept of "surplus manpower" is not really company wide. For my division, we're busier than ever, with as one of our regular vendors put it, an astonishing number of RFPs continued to be published in recent weeks, given the business climate and all.
My work as PM (Project Manager, not Prime Minister) has been so hectic that it affected not only my exercise programme, but also made me late to fetch the kids from childcare. A fortnight ago, I couldn't even fetch them. Fortunately, Snowylady was on course and could get off at more regular hours to fetch them, though for one particular day, she couldn't do it and the childcare was gracious enough to have one of the teachers send Snowylass and Snowylad to my in-laws in a taxi, and declined to accept any reimbursement (we felt obliged, so we took care of the school's pet terrapin for a week during their term break).
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