Reduction in working hours

[LakieLady]

I work for a medium-sized third sector organisation. I've been there for nearly 14 years and have had a number of different roles and hours in that time.

One of the projects we take referrals from has folded, my hours are to be reduced from 17pw to 12pw. We had the formal consultation meeting about this some months ago, and at the time I was fine with it. I get my state pension in August, and a reduction for 4 months was no big deal and my partner was ok about picking a bit more of the bills. Also, they managed to fund my full hours from another source for several months, and my contract, which is permanent, remained at 17 hours.

But since then, my circumstances have changed (my partner died very suddenly, no pension, no will, and I'm left skint). Because of everything that was going on, I completely forgot that this change might happen. My salary will drop by £3.5k. I can't live on that for 4 months.

Can they alter a permanent contract like this? Is there anything I can do about it?

They are looking at doing a bit of a reorganisation and there may be some spare hours I can pick up elsewhere, from other projects. (They are actually a very supportive and decent employer.)

I would actually be better off if they made me redundant. My redundancy pay would be almost exactly the same as my earnings for the period from 1 April up until my pension date, so I wouldn't have to make dramatic changes straight away.

I'd prefer to be made redundant. I'm not really coping that well post-bereavement, and it would give me time to sort the house out, do some decorating and get it on the market. I find it difficult to get on with stuff like that while the house is full of work stuff and I have to have one room to work from (WFH because of Covid). And I could get JSA for that 4 months as well, (pitiful amount, but I'm so poor that any little helps lol).

My employers are very resistant to redundancy, presumably because of the costs involved. I only know of one person who was made redundant in all the years I've been there. Even with big changes, staff have been redeployed to other roles.

Is there any way that a 30% reduction in hours/pay can be deemed so significant it's effectively a redundancy?

Apologies for the rambling.

I’m so sorry for your loss
My feelings are if it was a formal meeting a while ago, were you given options ie accept the reduction in hours or choose to leave?
Did you sign a new contract accepting the changes?
If they make you or others redundant my understanding is they then can’t recruit the same role for a year so if there is an upturn in business they would be stuck but I only have a basic understanding of this sorry
My gut feeling is that it all sounds above board I’m afraid

It sounds like you accepted it though. They can certainly vary it with your consent, yes.

A reduction in hours is certainly not something a company can do unilaterally, if you disagreed they would have to either make you redundant or maintain the hours. But the trouble is you appear to have already given your agreement. I am very sorry for your changing circumstances but I don’t see how you can backtrack on this in a legal sense. I would recommend you try to negotiate more hours.

As an aside I am puzzled by the numbers, a reduction of 5 hours equates to £3500?

Thanks.

It was far from certain at the time we had the discussion, but I guess I gave my agreement in principle.

Yes, @Aprilx it's around that. I'm on £13 something an hour.