Can contract be changed unilaterally?

rorysdad

Hi,

Asking for a friend. She has worked for the same company for around 5 years working in a branch office of a company that has another 4 branches - all in the same area and fairly near to the same branch she currently works in (ie: the other branches are local and not scattered around the country - if that makes any difference to the position!)

She has now been told by her employer that rather than work in the same branch she has been at for 5 years that she must travel around as and when required to provide cover at the other four branches.

Can they make her do this?

RD

engineer_amy

Changes to contracts can only be made with the agreement of both parties, and confirmed in writing within one month of the change taking effect.


However, ask her to check her original contract carefully. The employer may have built in a flexibility clause to allow changes to be made unilaterally due to business needs.
Also a lot of standard contracts can contain something along the lines of "Your normal place of work will be X, however It is a condition of employment and the Employee hereby agrees that he/she will carry out his/her work at whatever place or site the Employer shall designate."

agrinnall

They can't make her do it, but I'd be surprised if they haven't got this covered in the contract of employment so if she refuses she won't be working in any of the branches for much longer.

stevemLS

If someone refuses a change to a contract (if there is no mobility clause in it) after proper consultation if the post as it stands no longer meets the requirements of the employer then it could easily become a redundancy scenario.

It is far easier for contractual changes to be imposed than many people think.

rorysdad

Many thanks for all the responses.

She says that "the contract I have is out of date. It is the first one I got when I joined the company and I was working part time 'floating' back in 2009. I don't think I still have a copy of it.

In 2012 I was asked to run another branch full-time. I was never called upon to go to any other branch.

I then moved to another branch full-time - and I have been in the current branch for 18 months full time - again with no floating - so as it's been so long, I believe the current branch is my work place even though there is no contract?

Can anyone comment please?

RD

agrinnall

It doesn't matter, if there's a business need for her to to work in multiple (local) branches her employer can require her to do that. The only way she could argue against it is if her contract explicitly states that her workplace is and will only be a specific branch - I doubt very much if the employer would be daft enough to do this, and the fact that she has moved branches on request previously strongly suggest that there is no such statement. What is her objection to doing what her employer asks?