Can they make you use holiday instead of paying the 80% wage

paul2louise

My husband is an engineer not working on anything frontline. After Boris made his announcements he was told to attend a meeting this morning. The company were reluctant to send staff home until they knew if their supplier was closing. He did eventually get sent home at 10, 3 hours later. Now they are saying that they will pay the staff 2 or the 3 weeks of shutdown at 80%  and want the staff to use a week's holiday for the 3rd week. My husband only has 2 days holiday left so can they do this. 
Thanks

7Phil

Which dates does "the shutdown" refer to? Was he working on those dates and was that before the 80% scheme starts? 
If so then it's possible they need him to take paid time off for previous shutdown.
If they are saying take 80% pay from now for two weeks, and then after that take annual leave then I doubt it. It's because once a worker is designated furloughed they stay that way throughout the crisis (as far as I know - I am not sure if they could be recalled).

Undervalued

In normal times any employer can instruct an employee when to take their holiday, just be giving notice twice as long as the length of the holiday they are required to take. So two week's notice to take a week's holiday is correct.

However I agree with 7Phil that the furlough situation may complicate that. Plus the fact he only has two days holiday remaining complicates it further.

Jeremy535897

I think the clue as to what is happening here lies in the fact that they are paying 80% of wages for 2 weeks out of three. If they were refunded the full amount by HMRC why this restriction. I suspect the answer is that they are not looking at the job retention scheme, but financing it themselves, perhaps because they are only expecting to be shut for 3 weeks.
If your husband gets 80% for 2 weeks plus 2 days paid holiday he'll be better off than many others.

sharpe106

They can't just decide to cut the wages by 80% and fund it themselfs, otherwise any company will do that when quiet. They either have to carry on paying them for working or acces the funding. By the sounds of they are probably only expecting to be closed for 3 weeks and then expect to be busy again once reopen so have decided to get the staff to use the holiday up so everybody will be avaliable to work once it restarts again.

Jeremy535897

If a company doesn't need its employees it can make them redundant. That is probably what will happen to someone who says they don't want wages to be cut to 80% for not working.

paul2louise

They shut today and made this decision and emailed him this afternoon. Yes I assume they are thinking they only need to be shut for 3 weeks. My husband says it's all been quite messy. Noone really taking care of cleaning. Close working conditions. People using the same equipment. Other staff quite blatant showing off of abusing the social lockdown and illegal drinking in pubs over the weekend. He is glad to be at home finally and been quite worried. He says that if he has to take unpaid leave then he will to keep safe. He is happy to take the 80% just the forced holiday request that he can't do anyway as he doesn't have holiday left. 

calcotti

paul2louise said:

Yes I assume they are thinking they only need to be shut for 3 weeks. 

I think a lot of people are thinking that. What the government have said is that they will review the rules in three weeks time. In my opinion it is extremely unlikely that the rules will be relaxed at that time.

Jeremy535897

I wholly agree with Calcotti.