Employer (school) reducing my working hours

[debs227]

Hi all,

I am employed on a part time basis 15 hours per week term time and my headteacher (i work in a special school in an admin capacity) has come in to tell me that my position only warrants one day a week in line with other schools. ( i have been doing alot of extra work which was necessary but will not be necessary in the future as she is now employing one of her friends in a very nice well paid full time position which will include some of the work i have been doing )

She has indicated that she would welcome my application to another position in the school which is full time and starts early in the morning, which is impossible for me as my DC's do not have a breakfast club and i never really intended on working full time just yet. The problem is that this full time position is already filled by my collegue who this headteacher wants to get rid of!!!! it's just all wrong!

What i wanted to ask is, can she reduce my hours just like that?? Should i accept it without argument or should i say something. In my contract it says that my hours can be varied for operational needs, it doesn't say reduced!!

I am also very concerned for my admin colleagues. One lady who works part time will have no job after this 'restructuring' and the other full time lady will be told she has to reapply for her job.

Any advice welcome

Bumping for you because I would be very interested in the answer!

are you a member of a union? you should be able to contact them for advice.

I would suggest that schools are incredibly careful with staff and HR due to teh unionised nature of the profession

I'd take professional advice

I would think they can't just alter your hours. Are you in unison? Talk to them my colleague wanted to alter her hours by 2 per week and the fuss it caused as new contract etc was amazing. Talk to unison, doesnt matter if you're not a member you can get advice and join at the same time. All sounds very dodgy.

no, surely it would be a redundancy situation

Our office had just been 'restructured'. We had a consultation period, but then the poeple we expected to kept their jobs and those we didn't didn't.

Teaching profession is a law unto itself when it comes to HR. Someone I know is a deputy head and I spend many an evening explaining to her why all the things she and her head do are potentially illegal (it's always after the fact, though). Fortunately teachers have some of the most active unions to protect staff so as everyone says, speak to them. Having 'varying hours' in your contract is an issue but most people would interpret that as meaning that the variations must be reasonable, which this isn't.

Is there any way you can counter-offer with some other proposals that might address whatever problem she perceives that she has (eg job share for the full-time role or similar)?