Dp going down onto a 4 day week [sad] I dont really understand how it is working but we are trying to see the positives

[twinsetiscrapatflouncing]

I want to stress I am not whinging, I did think long and hard about posting this.

Dp is going down to a 4 day week after Christmas, at first it involves him earning the same money but he has to give up his holiday to fund that fourth day. I am not sure exactly who this is going to help the company's financial woes, but apparantly it is this or redundancies. The union have balloted workers but as dp works from home they seemed to have forgotten about him and he was not balloted and only told about it after the decision was made.

After three months it will be reviewed again and there is a possibility of working and being paid for 4 days a week.

Money will be tight but maybe it will allow us to have more time together.

Can they make dp give up his holidays like this?

I think that companies are doing this, or extended christmas shutdowns as an alternative to making redundancies, so staff are agreeing to these in the hope that things will pick up next year.

Companies save money by not having to heat/light/water the building on the extra day, and if manufacturing are cutting output so not buying in all the parts, only not to sell the final product (as the car plants have been doing).

Sorry to hear about this

Had not thought of costs like that, although as do works at home those costs dont apply to him.

He has been told that he needs to work Mon - Thurs but he only does half a day Fri but is being expected to give up a whole day's holiday cannot be right. He has also been told that if he is busy he will need to work the fifth day so there is hope.

I think he needs to look for another job as there have been worrying signs for a while but dp seems to have buried his head in the sand hoping everything will be OK.

They can't make him give up his holidays but financially he may be better off. Lay off pay is about £20.40 per day and only payable for 5 weeks in every 13. My OH's company have been on 4 days for the last 4 weeks. He had some holiday left so booked each layoff day as holiday. Technically, he will not claim layoff pay until after christmas although most of his collegues will not be entitled as they've already received it. They can't claim again until about March 2009 so they will only be paid for four days.