Can my hours be cut without my agreement? Ways round it???

[deeplydepressed]

My employer is having a 90 day consultation period with precious little consulting on our part. The aim is to alter our working patterns to suit the service need (fair enough).

It looks like they want to standardise working weeks to 15, 20, 30 37.5 hours. I work 22.5 so can they cut my hours to 20 without my permission? I cannot afford to lose 10 hours per month pay.

Apparently they can sack us if we disagree with their proposals and re offer us the job on their terms.

We have a union and I will fight it. I only need to delay the implementation as I am leaving in may anyway. any ideas anyone. ?

I hope someone will be along to help with your main question. But I'd like to add that one thing to do now is find out whether these cutbacks are being made because they are on the edge of going bust. Because if so, you might want to be looking at a pragmatic way of looking after your longterm interests, not just preserving hours right now. If they cannot control costs, and there is a real likelihood they could go bankrupt before May, you stand to lose more than 60-70 hours pay.

In short yes they can as they are arguing business need. As part of the consultation you should have the ability to go back and demonstrate how you can fill the business need with other changes / argue with how the business case is stacked up (your union should do this anyway, I've never had a union not argue the business case was rubbish even when it was solid).

Do you have the option to increase to 30 hours? If not andyou do end up with 10 hours less you need to check nennefit entitlements at the new level, you might not be as badly off as you fear.

Thank you all, yes they are arguing business need, but as its the NHS they wont go bankrupt as such! I guess they can pretty much do what they like but I'll keep my ears open for options until next May!

At the 1 to 1 consultation the manager did put forward a case for keeping 22.5 hours, but if its a case of dropping hours for a few months or increasing them to 30 I will increase. I've got to pay off my new car by May [hsmile]

They might not go bust but if there's no funding there's no budget. The other option might be redundancies. There may be several people who would be delighted to reduce their hours.

The only case I can see you can have is that the change is arbitrary. Why choose 15, 20, 30 and 37.5 hours? It's not like they're the same increment. And when a change is arbitrary it's hard to justify as a business case.

I'll be noting that morti because it IS just arbitrary. I have been working 3 x 7.5 hour days which includes every weekend which is the out of hours period they want us to cover. Hopefully if they can legally drop my hours they have to give equal consideration to increasing them. They will have funding I think especially as some people will certainly leave.

Is it to aid HR efficiency, by having fewer categories of hours? I manage a team where people work 8,9,12,16,20,22,28,30 or 35 hours a week, it is impossible to prepare rotas for them using automated methods, I want to rationalise them all to maybe 3 or 4 categories, maybe 16, 20,28 and 35. TBH those working under 16 hours a week cost more to employ than they generate in income.

Yes higgle I think to make automation easier. Our rotas are done on a computer with little human intervention. Hence I am working xmas 23,24,25,26 dec and new year 31,1,2nd jan . Their rationale is that I work weekends. Just like last year then, and does that mean if I stayed I wouldnt work it again? Not bloody likely! And does easter fall on a weekend...why yes..every year!!! I love the fairness of a computer system.

I guess they can cut my hours but will use as many delaying tactics til May when I leave anyway to keep my hours = pay up!

Well, at least with Christmas it rolls through the week so you will get your days off eventually.

Hi deeply, I know that this was posted last month but I have just found out that I am in the same position too, are you a nurse by any chance? My trust is redesigning at the moment and after consultation they want to cut my evening shift from 5-11pm to 6-10pm so in effect 4 hrs per week. I have calculated a paycut of £300+ a month! There is no way I can afford it :-( I was unsure if this is something they could just do but I guess they can. Great news on top of Christmas! I'm a worrier at the best of times :(