Furlough/salary ransom

kjsville

I was furloughed, but it’s coming to an end. Can my boss take me off furlough but not pay me my full salary when I’m back at work? Can he also threaten to make me redundant (with only 1 weeks notice as I’ve only been with the company a short time) instead of putting me back on furlough if I don’t agree to a lower salary going forward? 

Thanks for any advice. 

daKlone

In my opinion:

No, he can't make you take a lower salary unless your contract of employment allows it or you sign an agreement to vary that contract.

Yes, he can make you redundant as long as he follows the correct procedure for redundancies including showing that your position is redundant (i.e. there is no work or insufficient work for that job to exist), going through a consultation period etc. In the current climate I would imagine that this might be easy to establish in many businesses.

Sorry not to have better news for you.

Undervalued

daKlone said:

In my opinion:

No, he can't make you take a lower salary unless your contract of employment allows it or you sign an agreement to vary that contract.

Yes, he can make you redundant as long as he follows the correct procedure for redundancies including showing that your position is redundant (i.e. there is no work or insufficient work for that job to exist), going through a consultation period etc. In the current climate I would imagine that this might be easy to establish in many businesses.

Sorry not to have better news for you.

Sorry but the news is worse than that.

Assuming "a short time" means less than two year the employer does not need to follow any procedure. He could just terminate the OP's employment. Whether it is called redundancy or not is irrelevant as there is no entitlement to any redundancy pay with less than two years employment. The only entitlement would be a weeks notice plus any untaken holiday.

Also an employer can impose a change of contract, which the OP would be deemed to have accepted if he did not positively reject it. There is no requirement for it to be signed. Given the above, rejecting would be largely meaningless.