i need some advice about change in working hours :(

monkeydrum

i'm hoping someone can help me out. i work for a large supermarket chain and they are opening a new local store. i've worked there for many years and i was a full time team leader until becoming pregnant a couple of years ago. at the end of my maternity leave in 2013, i had a return to work meeting with my managers to discuss my options. after a few heated discussions i eventually persuaded them to allow me to resume my team leader role but on a part-time basis. obviously due to now having a child, we had to agree the days which i was available to work (although my original full time contract from years ago does not stipulate specific hours)

anyway, i returned to work as a part time team leader working on the agreed days and this has been fine for the last year or so. however, they are now closing down my store and relocating my position to the new store and as part of the move they have demanded that all team leaders must be available to work any day of the week, which obviously i cannot do due to lack of childcare (as per my return to work discussion previously). i am now being told that if i cannot meet this requirement then i must step down from my team leader role


simple question - are they allowed to do this without making my position redundant? or do they have to honor the working days agreed upon returning to work after maternity?


thank you in advance for any help/advice

Another_not_new_user

monkeydrum wrote: »

i'm hoping someone can help me out. i work for a large supermarket chain and they are opening a new local store. i've worked there for many years and i was a full time team leader until becoming pregnant a couple of years ago. at the end of my maternity leave in 2013, i had a return to work meeting with my managers to discuss my options. after a few heated discussions i eventually persuaded them to allow me to resume my team leader role but on a part-time basis. obviously due to now having a child, we had to agree the days which i was available to work (although my original full time contract from years ago does not stipulate specific hours)

anyway, i returned to work as a part time team leader working on the agreed days and this has been fine for the last year or so. however, they are now closing down my store and relocating my position to the new store and as part of the move they have demanded that all team leaders must be available to work any day of the week, which obviously i cannot do due to lack of childcare (as per my return to work discussion previously). i am now being told that if i cannot meet this requirement then i must step down from my team leader role


simple question - are they allowed to do this without making my position redundant? or do they have to honor the working days agreed upon returning to work after maternity?


thank you in advance for any help/advice

Sorry but I am going to have to rephrase your questions because they are the wrong questions. Are they allowed to do this without making your position redundant? They have done it. The question has to be, can you stop them, because nobody else can do anything about it except you. And the answer to that isn't simple. Your role, as in your existing role, is redundant. But that does not mean that the employer has to offer you redundancy pay - positions are made redundant and not people. There are other team leader jobs and they are offering you one - so you are not redundant, or to be more accurate, you are not being dismissed for the reason of redundancy.


The rest then gets even more complicated I'm sorry to say. Do they have to honour your post maternity leave contract. Well that contract is part of the package that goes with a position that no longer exists, although there are other team leader positions but they have different terms. To be honest, the only people who could definitively say whether this is fair or not would be the judges at an employment tribunal. But it definitely might be legally fair if the employer can justify their decision on business grounds.


If this is no longer open to negotiation, then your only option is a fight - a grievance and another formal request for flexible working hours on the basis of parental responsibility. But if neither of those win you are into the legal arena, and that doesn't come without a cost, both hard cash and emotional stress. Your position may be arguable, you may win - you also may not. And you won't likely come out with a job at the end of it either. None of which are reasons not to go down that route, but they are reasons to go down it with your eyes open; and to decide not to if you are not prepared for the risk.

monkeydrum

thanks for your reply. although it's a bit disappointing, i called ACAS earlier today and to be honest, they said more or less the same thing. like with many of these things, it seems very unfair - i'll not bore you with the details, but for personal reasons i am completely unable to work on a saturday. that's the crux of the issue. this was discussed and agreed upfront before i returned to work and as i understand it, forms part of my contract. if this was not agreed, i wouldn't have been in a position to accept the role. i am now being told that unless i make myself available to work on saturdays, which they know full well i am unable to do, i will have to take a cut in pay and drop to a more junior role. i have obided by the rules in my contract, but they are choosing to shift the goal posts. i fully appreciate they are entitled to do this, but i didn't think they would be able to do it without making me redundant. it almost feels like i'm now being penalised for having a child because they want to change the rules after the terms have been agreed. i have read this on the workingfamilies.org web site which seems to back me up...

"If your employer is making a fundamental change to your hours/pattern of work, this could be a redundancy. This is because your employer doesn’t need you do the job in the hours/pattern you had before, but in a different pattern – so your original job in the pattern you did it is redundant. Although this won’t get you your original job back, it could mean that you are entitled to some redundancy pay."

however, like i said previously, ACAS have more-or-less said the same as you, so i'm pretty confused. they (as in ACAS) basically told me i have 3 options:-
1. Obviously accept the new terms
2. Take the more junior role at a lower rate of pay
3. Not agree to point 1 or 2 and go down the tribunal or even unfair dismissal route

Another_not_new_user

I am afraid that you are suffering from the vision blindness that often afflicts readers of internet sites. The quote you post from says "could" not "can". "Could" is conditional. "Can" is unconditional. So you could be entitled to redundancy pay - or even unfair dismissal. And a judge would have to decide that. So it says the same thing as I have told you and as ACAS have told you. So I am afraid that we all are saying that it comes down to what risks you are willing to take and whether you will fight. I don't suppose you are in a union?

monkeydrum

yes, i understand what you're saying, and yes, i am in a union

to be honest, i'm still in the consultation stage, as far as i'm concerned they haven't given me anything official which states that my old role is actually going to be made redundant. that's not how they're portraying it... they're basically just saying "you'll have to work saturdays or do this other job"

Undervalued

I totally agree with ANNU.

As I've said many times on this forum, people are often surprised at just how easy it is for an employer to change your terms and conditions.

Yes, if agreement cannot be reached you have the option of rejecting the changes, resigning and claiming unfair dismissal. It is then up to a tribunal to decide if the changes were reasonable or not.

People are often also surprised that significant changes are frequently found to be reasonable as the employer will invariably argue "business reasons" and it is not in a tribunal's remit to question that.

Even if you do win you will end up with some compensation but no job.

So realistically you only go down this route if the changes are so unacceptable to you that you would resign anyway. It seldom if ever makes sense to resign just so that you can make a claim.

Sorry!

Another_not_new_user

monkeydrum wrote: »

yes, i understand what you're saying, and yes, i am in a union

to be honest, i'm still in the consultation stage, as far as i'm concerned they haven't given me anything official which states that my old role is actually going to be made redundant. that's not how they're portraying it... they're basically just saying "you'll have to work saturdays or do this other job"

Then you hightail it down to the union and get advice from them right now. Don't wait until the cement dries. Being in a union doesn't change the law - but it might help your employers be more rational. But once they have made a decision they will be harder to budge.

monkeydrum

ok thanks. my union rep is scheduled to be in my next consultation meeting. to be honest, i'm not sure what will happen next. i guess i could ask them if they are making my role redundant because that hasn't been officially stated as of yet. all they've done is given me 2 options:- work saturdays or drop to a lower position. it's all a bit vague - certainly nothing official has been put on paper

it sounds like i have some thinking to do. fortunately, my partner is the main earner so i am in a position where i could afford to reject the offers on the table, but i don't really want to go down that route...

can i ask one more question? if i wanted to take this to a tribunal, how does that actually work? i mean, would i have to accept the new terms or the junior role in order to continue my employment whilst it went to tribunal? or would they have to leave me in my existing position until the issue was resolved?

thanks again

k3lvc

monkeydrum wrote: »

they're basically just saying "you'll have to work saturdays or do this other job"

And whilst we can't say with any certainty how a tribunal would view this the reality is it's a retail environment and you're in a customer facing role. I'd have thought that Saturday availability was a far more reasonable expectation than for a schoolteacher for example

Is there any flexibility that might offer a negotiating point i.e. 1 Saturday in 4 ?

monkeydrum

k3lvc - i agree about the retail environment, but the point is this wasn't agreed when i returned from maternity right at the very start, and i have adhered to my part of the contract (in terms of working hours) for at least the last 12 months or so since returning so i believe those hours form part of my contract. if they are allowed to shift the goalposts then i guess i don't have a leg to stand on, but i'm trying to figure out if this is legally allowed (which it sounds like it is) or whether it's actually very ethical behaviour from a huge company. i thought they were supposed to support young mums returning to work

there's not really any flexibility. i have offered to help out when i can, but because i cannot actually agree to working saturdays regularly it doesn't meet the new requirements of my role (or the requirements of the new role - i'm confused as to whether it's my role or a new one?!)

Takeaway_Addict

monkeydrum wrote: »

k3lvc - i agree about the retail environment, but the point is this wasn't agreed when i returned from maternity right at the very start, and i have adhered to my part of the contract (in terms of working hours) for at least the last 12 months or so since returning so i believe those hours form part of my contract. if they are allowed to shift the goalposts then i guess i don't have a leg to stand on, but i'm trying to figure out if this is legally allowed (which it sounds like it is) or whether it's actually very ethical behaviour from a huge company. i thought they were supposed to support young mums returning to work

there's not really any flexibility. i have offered to help out when i can, but because i cannot actually agree to working saturdays regularly it doesn't meet the new requirements of my role (or the requirements of the new role - i'm confused as to whether it's my role or a new one?!)

You keep saying they are moving the goal posts but its no different to what you did after maternity leave.