FF,
I have never asked for, nor been offered, holiday pay. I have not had to take a single sick day during my current employment, but if I did, I would not ask for, nor expect, sick pay.
I do not have a written contract with my employer which specifies notice periods. As such, when colleagues of mine have handed in their notice with less than a week before they start their new airline job, my employer has had to accept that - just as they have to accept that I have taken far more time off than many employers would allow. It works both ways.
I am fully aware that this is not entirely legal, and I am sure that if I reported it, the authorities would find as they have with bogbeagle. Since I am not contracted to work any set number of days, it wouldn't surprise me if the number of days I was scheduled to work reduced if I started making noises - but since I'm happy with the current situation, I have no intention of making noises in any case. Besides which, it's all a little academic since I'm leaving in a week.
Bogbeagle, I don't believe there is an imbalance of power to the extent that you think there is. As I already said, the lack of formal procedures works both ways. As for general Ts+Cs, with the employment market picking up the way it is, my employer has recently offered jobs to a couple of new instructors, and been turned down because the money was too low. I don't believe they are having trouble finding instructors yet, but if the employment situation continues on its current trend, it won't be very long before the balance turns the other way, and the schools need the instructors almost as much as the instructors need the schools.
On a more general note (but a good indication of how unions' need to get involved does not work), many years ago, I took a summer job in the school holidays at an unemployment office. One of the girls who was also there for the summer was related to a permanent member of staff (her niece, if I remember correctly) and used to help her aunt out on the front desk from time to time. Everyone was happy with this arrangement, until the union rep discovered that this girl was not of a sufficiently high grade to be working on the front desk. Despite everyone telling him to drop it, he insisted on pushing management to promote her to the appropriate grade for the work she was doing. Of course management were having none of it, and promptly told her she was not allowed to work with her aunt on the front desk any more. She was confined to the back office, and left shortly afterwards because she didn't like the way she'd been pushed out of the job by the union rep's involvement.
FFF
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