Termination of employment due to ill health

mia123

No its not local authority.
In the break down they have included any increment.
So even though i was still employed under a f/t contract they are correct in using the p/t hrs to work out the final pay.
Many thanks

mia123

Should my notice pay be paid on the f/t wage or the p/t wage as the act says full pay.

SarEl

I did answer this - the definition of full-pay in the act means whatever pay you were entitled to at the time of termination. The only way to determine this is by the mutually agreed variation of contract - the part-time hours. Full pay does not, in this circumstance, mean "contractual pay". And in this case it is the part-time wages, because you were not working your original contractual hours prior to going sick, you were working a variation to your contract which you agreed to (by working the reduced hours - you didn't have to sign the variation). So the p/t wage is the one used. Had you never returned to work part-time, but had lastly worked your full hours, then that would have been the wage used.

mia123

Many thanks it is much appreciated.

SarEl

mia123 wrote: »

Many thanks it is much appreciated.

Thanks. I am sure you'd have preferred the other answer, but unfortunately this time I couldn't give it. It is something people should always consdier when going on to part-time hours for any reason - people returning from maternity leave are often caught out in the same way. Any agreed reduction in hours, even of a temporary nature, is an agreed variation of contract.

mia123

Yes I would have preferred the other answer but the main thing is i now have closure and can get on with my recovery.
It is something to bear in mind in the future when i have another job and the same should occur.

SarEl

mia123 wrote: »

Yes I would have preferred the other answer but the main thing is i now have closure and can get on with my recovery.
It is something to bear in mind in the future when i have another job and the same should occur.

You should also look out for it in redundancy situations - cutting your hours reduces entitlement to redundancy pay, so people who agree to a cut in hours one month to avoid redundancy can suddenly find that they are redundant and the reduced hours are used for their redundancy pay calculation two months down the line.

There is a belief amongst many lay people that contracts are set in tablets if stone - they are not. As soon as you agree a variation the contract changes - and agreement may be nothing more than turning up to work and doing it. If you (or anyone else reading this) is ever again in the position of needing to change or vary your contract, you need to be very clear what the potential implications of doing this are, and how it impacts on your employment position.

Emplawyer

But the OP told us she was on her full-time wage throughout this process even though working part time hours on a phased return -see post 3, in answer to the question in post 2. If that is true, and we haven't been under a misapprehension throughout, then her full time wage is therefore her full pay at the time of termination.

SarEl

The whole of post #3 is replicated below:

mia123 wrote: »

Yes my contract didn't alter.
I was working only 20hrs at the time as this was a phased return to work with the hope that i would build up to f/t hrs.Unfortunately i had a relapse so was signed off.

thanks

At what point does this say that she was receiving her full-time wage? Because I don't see where it says this at all. And in fact in all later posts the OP has confirmed that she was receiving p/t pay when on her phased return / p/t hours. She has never disputed that this was the case.

The OP was, as I said, under a misapprehension that her contract remained the same. It did not and could not have done in law, since she and the employer had mutually agreed a variation - otherwise she could not have been working reduced hours. As you suggest by your user ID that you are an employment lawyer, then surely you are aware of the laws on mutally agreed variation of contract - they do not even have to be put in writing, since the act of working reduced hours, acknowledged and practiced by both parties to the contract (in that the OP turned up to work for fewer hours, and the employer did not expect her to work more hours and paid her a reduced wages accordingly) is sufficient to demonstarte a contractual variation - which may be permanant or temporary. In this case, had the OP been fortunate enough to return to full time work then the variation would have revereted to the original terms because that was the agreement - that at a future date the original contract would be reinstated. But unfortunately the OP was unable to fulfill this and so the effective contract is the varied one that was still in place at the time of her going off sick again, and unable to comply with the expected terms of the variation, to return to full-time.

getmore4less

Does the fact the the hours were increased to the 20 from lower numbers over a period introduce the posibility that this could be conisdered a variable hours situation and the weeks pay be averaged over the previous 12 weeks of paid work?

Or is this just a series of changes to the contracted hours.

Or does it depend on the wording of the return to work agreement.