Redundancy, or three-days, Mondays, Wednesday, Friday

Luis_Lora

My wife has been offer redundancy, or three-day working week after 20 years with the company, after long consideration She accepted the three day a week, now the company are saying she would have to work alternating days that is Monday Wednesday and Friday I suspect she would be doing same amount of work for les pay any help would be appreciated

LindsayO

I was in a very similar position about a year ago. We were told that one out of our team of 10 was going to be made redundant.
I had just been told by my neurologist that I ought to consider going part-time because of my health and onther girl wanted to go part-time after coming back from maternity leave. Anyway we negotiated part-time contracts for both of us and no redundancy. So far so good.

We also negotiated what our duties would be. Since we had three main types of duties we each dropped one type of duty, so it all seemed pretty straightforward, until our yearly review meetings wher we set goals for the upcoming year

My boss still wanted me to keep doing all 3 types of duties. I found it quite hard. He is the boss, it is his job to tell me what I need to do, but we had agreed I would not being doing certain tasks anymore. I found I had to be very firm and even quite brusk with him. "No, we agreed I would not do that. If I continue to do that, my new contract amounts to a paycut" I also had to bring in the medical advice I received to say that not only was I not prepared to do the tasks, but that I would not be physically capable of doing them.

It felt like quite a risk, but it also felt like I had to get it established at the beginning. So if I was your wife I would be asking for some assurances about what her new reduced role would be.

I found out later that the other part-timer had been asked to take on the same tasks (but not through her annual review). Then about a month into our part-time contract, they asked us to take on another completely new task. The asked the whole team to take it on, saying it would take each of us no more that 12 days. On a 5 day week that is over 2 weeks, on three day week that is 4 weeks. It took a fair bit of effort on my part to persuade them that they were asking more of me than the full-timers and to get them to take some of my duties away from me. The full-timers were able to cut back on the time they spent on the extra third duty that I no longer did, as it was flexible. But I had much less flexibility in the duties that I did. Anyway, my point is, that even if she negotiates a drop in duties, they may still continue to treat her as full-time and she may need to be prepared to keep making the point that part-timers are on a different contract.

I found that with my boss, as long as I was clear, firm, offered a rational explanation and did not complain, put in lots of "I'd really love to be able to continuing doing this task, I just can't, if I am to continue doing this other task"

Hope this helps

Luis_Lora

Thanks a lot for sharing you experience a will pass it to my wife, I believe today She is discussing her new role with the company working alternating days, very difficult to find other work during the rest of the week
Will inform
One again many thanks

Googlewhacker

The only thing to be aware of is that if you go part time and then get made redundant later on your redundancy package is only calculated from the previous 12 or 17 weeks (can't remember which one) so if she has an enhanced redundancy package compared to statutory it may be worth her making sure it is in the contract that any redundancy is pro rata (Ie 20 years acknowledged at full time and whatever she works part time is pro ratad IYGWIM)

I think the above is correct, hope someone can confirm or deny it for me

Luis_Lora

Thanks for all the help very much appreciated

hermum

Googlewhacker wrote: »

The only thing to be aware of is that if you go part time and then get made redundant later on your redundancy package is only calculated from the previous 12 or 17 weeks (can't remember which one) so if she has an enhanced redundancy package compared to statutory it may be worth her making sure it is in the contract that any redundancy is pro rata (Ie 20 years acknowledged at full time and whatever she works part time is pro ratad IYGWIM)

I think the above is correct, hope someone can confirm or deny it for me

I was also going to mention this.

anamenottaken

Luis_Lora wrote: »

I suspect she would be doing same amount of work for les pay any help would be appreciated

If she can do the same amount of work in less time, then why should an employer pay 66% more for it?