Hey all,
I'm asking this on behalf of my girlfriends old work mates. She worked in a store for about 2 years until last september before switching branches to dublin so she knows them quite well and is still in contact with them all. One of the guys she worked with for two years in the last store and who was still working at the store died yesterday, he was found by two of the other employees at around 10pm last night in his apartment. They had to call his parents and tell them as they live a couple of hours away.
One of the two that found him was the store manager and she was understandably upset, it's a small store of maybe a dozen people so they were all close and she'd worked with him herself for three years. This morning she had to open the shop as there was no one else who could, they're understaffed in terms of managers down there still I think. She had to work about 4-5 hours this morning before getting replaced by a manager from another store.
Now while I think that it's pretty bad form of the store to make her open it the morning after finding her colleague dead that's not the worst. They're not saying that no one there will be given time off to go to the funeral which will be held in his home town about two hours drive away. Considering the fact that he was their employee personally I don't think it's too much to ask for the store to close for atleast half a day in order to give the people that knew him time to grieve.
This is in Ireland so I know the laws will be a bit different maybe but generally in things like this they're pretty much a copy of your laws. Does anyone know if there's a legal right the employees have in this situation? I know there is when it's a family member but I can't find anything when it's a colleague.
Of course the decent thing for the company to do would be give them the time off, get people from other stores to cover if they really want to keep the place open. I'm not sure if their HR department sees it that way though.
I'm asking this on behalf of my girlfriends old work mates. She worked in a store for about 2 years until last september before switching branches to dublin so she knows them quite well and is still in contact with them all. One of the guys she worked with for two years in the last store and who was still working at the store died yesterday, he was found by two of the other employees at around 10pm last night in his apartment. They had to call his parents and tell them as they live a couple of hours away.
One of the two that found him was the store manager and she was understandably upset, it's a small store of maybe a dozen people so they were all close and she'd worked with him herself for three years. This morning she had to open the shop as there was no one else who could, they're understaffed in terms of managers down there still I think. She had to work about 4-5 hours this morning before getting replaced by a manager from another store.
Now while I think that it's pretty bad form of the store to make her open it the morning after finding her colleague dead that's not the worst. They're not saying that no one there will be given time off to go to the funeral which will be held in his home town about two hours drive away. Considering the fact that he was their employee personally I don't think it's too much to ask for the store to close for atleast half a day in order to give the people that knew him time to grieve.
This is in Ireland so I know the laws will be a bit different maybe but generally in things like this they're pretty much a copy of your laws. Does anyone know if there's a legal right the employees have in this situation? I know there is when it's a family member but I can't find anything when it's a colleague.
Of course the decent thing for the company to do would be give them the time off, get people from other stores to cover if they really want to keep the place open. I'm not sure if their HR department sees it that way though.
