Constructive Dismissal?

[YouMakeMeWannaLaLa]

I had a part time job working mon 4pm-10pm and sat 8am-1.30pm. I went on ML in April, due to return in Nov but while I was away work had a big reshuffle and redundancy was threatened (government funding cut).

I was told I would have to start at 7:00am on the sat to keep my job and change the mon shift to tues. Not ideal butI agreed. 4 weeks ago I was told I would now have to work until 5pm on the saturday.

I just can't do a 10 hour shift (young baby, childcare etc.) so I've resigned.

They knew I wouldn't be able to do those hours and I was told it was 'non-negotiable'.

It didn't occur to me to do anything about it but a former collegue said they've done this to a lot of people. No one was made officially redundant but lots have had to resign so they've saved on redundancy pay.

What do you think?

Changes to terms & conditions should be agreed mutually and redundancy should be an option if you don't agree. They can sometimes circumvent that requirement and force the changes through if they can show the future of the business hung in the balance and therefore forcing these changes was the only way of avoiding an even bigger upheaval.

So yes, you probably should have been offered redundancy, and constructive could probably be claimed (although they would counter argue that you should have followed company 'procedure' or appealed before resigning). Whether it is worth the aggro of pursuing and whether your claim might win would depend on your circs, how long you have been with the company, whether it was 'standard' in the company/industry to continually vary hours and shifts, what exactly your contract says on this, and other factors besides.

Pursuing it can take an age through the tribunals, but if you think they may roll over quickly and pay you off to keep you quiet then it could be worth getting a local solicitor to lob a letter over the fence at them.

Thank you Squiffy I will have a think but I'd only been there a 18m and it was semi-common for them to change the days and shifts you work but I can't believe they increased my overall hours by nearly 50% without negotiation. I doubt I'll do anything, feel really manipulated, though and just really upset because I loved the job.

I think they had to increase my hours because others had resigned due to their working hours being drastically changed (imo deliberately) making childcare etc. impossible

Thank you