Lay off or annual leave

Hi All,
Hope some of you could advise me in this regards.

The company is going through a difficult situation(atleast the management has done its best to give this view to everyone) and have started laying off staffs.

Today my manager asked me to take next week off. This is going to come out of my annual holidays entitlement. I presume that if I have said no for this then he had no other choice but to lay me off.

1.What I am wondering now is that is it a right decission to take a week off or should I have declined the request?
2.Is the company trying to deplete my annual holidays before laying me off? If so is it a good thing or a bad thing?

As i was put into this situation about an hour ago, my mind hasn't settled enough to think about the solution. I would appreciate your comments regarding this.

With regards,
ASIV

HI ASIV, and welcome to AAM.

Im sorry to hear that your company is experiencing difficulty.

As far as I know the company is entitled to dictate to you when you take your annual leave. It is not unusual for factories to insist that holidays are taken during the summer and winter shutdown periods.

Is this a redundancy situation?

Is it just your plant / factory that is in distress or is it the entire enterprise?

Are you a member of a trade union?

Sometimes when people use the word "lay off" they mean a temporary "lay off" for a period of weeks. Which is it in your case?

Im assuming that you are a full time regular employee and not a seasonal, casual, temporary or other wise atypical worker. Im also assuming that you are employed in the Republic of Ireland.

aj

Hi ajapale,
This is a temporary layoff situation. No one has been made redundant yet. The whole issue of temporary layoffs started two weeks back. The situation might verywell lead to redundancy. That is why i was wondering if it would be any advantage for me to hold on to my annual leaves.

The distress is for the whole company.

I am a member of the union, but the union is not in a position to do anything about the temporary layoff situation as the company is in a strong position to say that there is no work. As a matter of fact more than half of the union commitee has been laid off.

I am a permanent(??????) & pensionalbe employee working full time in republic of ireland.
With regards,
ASIV