Loose working hours or take furlough

charlotteandfamily

Hi everyone, I am in a but of a tizzy atm my employers reduced my working hours to less than 30% due to staffing and corona virus. Obviously I wouldn't be able to live without 70% of my wage so I requested furlough. I was told that if I took the offer of furlough I would loose my term time contract. And I had to agree to this in order to be allowed to take the furlough. Now it is 2.20 in the mornig and I cant sleep. I needed the term time hours to fit around my family. I feel that I was forced into the furlough by the reduced hours. Can anyone advise me what I should do. I want to point out that I'm a minimum paid key worker but I love the work I do. 

7Phil

Sorry - what is term time hours - is it just only working during school term weeks?
At the moment being school weeks are a bit of a blur right? Furlough protection can potentially only last until 1 June (it may be extended) but it's not a permanent fixture.

Excuse me if I am being ignorant, I am just trying to understand your situation and worry.

HornetSaver

At the moment the guidance around furlough is extremely hazy so I'm afraid I'm not in a position to offer you the clarity you would want on the longer term. I do however have some thoughts and observations.

Firstly, furlough does not bind you to permanently stick with the employer after things start to get back to normality, therefore if they're absolutely adamant regarding your loss of right to work term-time only, there is nothing wrong with agreeing to this, taking furlough, booking for instance holiday to cover as much of August as possible and the October half term, and trying to get a new job by the start of 2021. It would be unwise to explicitly tell them you were going to do this, but there's absolutely nothing wrong in doing this, nor do I think you'd be doing anything morally wrong given that they've used the situation to try and alter the permanent nature of your employment.

Secondly, prospects of alternative employment in the short term look grim, therefore to me furlough would seem to me to be better than the alternatives of working for much less money than furlough, or resigning. Thirdly, and it's a relatively small consolation, but my personal opinion is that a combination of present circumstances and furlough would reduce your shorter term outgoings to the point that you could probably bridge the gap in that 20% of lost earnings.

I can't speak with where you stand with regards to the employer in the longer term, in terms of whether they have acted appropriately or whether you should seek to go further, employment law is not something I'm well versed in. But my view is take the furlough now, deal with the rest later.