It seems to me that our reluctance to take our full holiday entitlement has the same root as our reluctance to strike or take ASOS - we don't want to disrupt students' learning. We need to get over this for the same reasons that we take industrial action: if we continue to give in, the situation will only get worse.
By working more hours/days/weeks/months per year than you are contracted for the employer learns that it only takes one person to do your job, then they'll only replace you with one person when you leave (if they replace you at all, of course), and that one person starts out with a job that cannot reasonably be done by one, and things go on downhill from there.
And there's more - the point of holidays from an employer's point of view is to ensure that staff stay bright, alert and fully functional when they are at work. Expressed in a rather less utilitarian way, our own motives are surely much the same: rest, relaxation, re-creation, all of which (however incidentally from our point of view) make us better able to do our jobs.
So we owe it to students, colleagues and ourselves to take our full holiday entitlement. I'm out and proud that I'm only losing six days from 2010/1 (plus the 5 that are carried over to next year.) I hope others can do better. Zero loss, anyone?
It seems to me that our reluctance to take our full holiday entitlement has the same root as our reluctance to strike or take ASOS - we don't want to disrupt students' learning. We need to get over this for the same reasons that we take industrial action: if we continue to give in, the situation will only get worse.
By working more hours/days/weeks/months per year than you are contracted for the employer learns that it only takes one person to do your job, then they'll only replace you with one person when you leave (if they replace you at all, of course), and that one person starts out with a job that cannot reasonably be done by one, and things go on downhill from there.
And there's more - the point of holidays from an employer's point of view is to ensure that staff stay bright, alert and fully functional when they are at work. Expressed in a rather less utilitarian way, our own motives are surely much the same: rest, relaxation, re-creation, all of which (however incidentally from our point of view) make us better able to do our jobs.
So we owe it to students, colleagues and ourselves to take our full holiday entitlement. I'm out and proud that I'm only losing six days from 2010/1 (plus the 5 that are carried over to next year.) I hope others can do better. Zero loss, anyone?