Compulsory drop in days

[Snowfalls108]

Hi there,

Wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this.

We are a company with 4 full time staff, and boss who works 2 days a week. We have a much larger parent company who deals with all accounts, pay, back office etc.

This morning the 4 full time staff (including me) received an email from boss requesting a meeting on Friday to discuss us reducing to a 4 day working week and therefore a 20% pay cut for April, May and June (when it will be looked at again. Also included in this email was a member of staff who has been offered a job, but had not contract as yet, for starting work in May.
I sent an email requesting someone from the parent company be present at the meeting but have had a reply stating that there would be no point.

Now my questions are:

1. Can the 4 of us be forced to drop our hours?
2. If this happens is it legal for this extra member of staff to be taken on?
3. I am due to go on maternity leave in September - will this be affected?
4. When we have this meeting is there anything we should be asking?

to give some background we are in London and none of the 4 of us is on more that 29k, (the lowest is on 20k) so a pay cut will be make a real difference to our standard of living.

Any help, thoughts etc, would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

contact ACAS for advice

Thanks HecAte...
In the hold queue now!

Anyone else any thoughts?

They couldn't tell me much, just said that if our boss was going to impose the change they had to give us a weeks notice for every year we've worked.

so they can change your contracted hours without your agreement then? I must say I'm surprised. I used to employ people and I never knew I was allowed to do that!!

you know who you need? I think her name is flowerybeanbag, she's an employment law expert!! Start a thread with her name in the title. I bet she can help you.

An employer can request this but you do not have to agree to this. However you may find the alternative is redundancy for one of you.

It is legal to take on the extra person if they are being employed for a different job as it is positions, not people which become redundant.

That's not very helpful advice from ACAS. They are often great but several times on here I've seen people come back with completely the wrong advice.

To change your terms and conditions your employer needs your consent, so you could withhold that, refuse the change. However with changes like this it is usually to avoid redundancies or to keep a company going, so refusing might not be your best option. You should be advised what will happen if you refuse, what the alternatives are, and should make sure you ask that.

A reduction in pay will affect your maternity pay, because SMP is calculated based on average earnings over an 8 week period from weeks 17 - 25 of your pregnancy.

It is perfectly legal for them to take on someone else and simultaneously ask you to reduce your hours, as island says this person might be doing different work anyway. However as part of your meeting you should be asked about suggestions for alternative steps that could be taken to achieve cost cutting, and suggesting this person is not taken on in the first place is definitely a good idea.

If you say no to a reduction in pay they will either then go ahead with redundancies, or they could force you to accept the change by terminating your employment and re-engaging you immediately on the new terms and conditions. You could then claim unfair dismissal, but if they have gone through all the hoops, consulted with you about any possible alternatives, and there is a genuine pressing business reason for doing this, which there normally is for pay cuts, then you could struggle to win a claim.

Have a read here about the hoops an employer needs to go through to change your contract, and here about what happens if you don't agree to the changes.

Hi Flowery and Islands,

Thanks for the info - much more helpful than ACAS!

We are all keen to make sure the company doesn't go under - our main concern is that we think there are other steps that should be taken before our pay is reduced (ie cancelling a lavish party that is scheduled!)

Hopefully the meeting will be productive.

Thank you again,

I agree with what Flowery said.

Just to follow up on Sazzles - I think what has happened there is that your employer is agreeing to 'make good' any loss of maternity pay resulting from the reduction in pay/hours. The SMP calculation is a purely mathematical thing on the pay cheques for weeks 17-25 of pregnancy. It doesn't matter if the reduction during that period is temporary (e.g. you are on sick leave, or unpaid leave), or indeed if pay is higher than normal (e.g. you got a bonus paid during those weeks), it all still just goes straight into the calculation.

I would really agree with Sazzles though that it is worth asking whether your employer would be willing to ensure that your maternity pay is not impacted if you take this pay cut. If you only get SMP, the effect is only likely to apply for the first 6 weeks anyway (given what you've said about salary bands).

Hi Sazzles and Ribena,

If it comes to that point I shall ask.
Cross fingers!