Furlough scheme

mjsvinyl

Hope I can explain this correct, the furlough changes in July, I'm currently not at work but my employer says that when they have to pay 10 percent towards making my pay up to 80 percent, they would like me to work that 10 percent ( which is fine with me) but can someone tell me how many hours I will have to work?, Used to work 40 hrs a week, cheers Mark

Jeremy535897

 it doesn't work like that. If you work, they have to pay you for the hours worked, and reduce the furlough claim accordingly.

Grumpy_chap

As Jeremy says with regard to how furlough works.

With regard to how many hours you would have to work if working 10% based on a normal 40 hours week, that would be 4 hours, which works quite well from a practical perspective:

• 40 hours per week is 8 hours per day (assuming you worked 5 days / week, so normal Monday - Friday)
• 4 hours is therefore half a day per week, which is a logical shift to actually work assuming the employer organises it like that.

The employer does not have to organise it like that and could ask for any shift pattern they chose, so 48 minutes per day if they wished.  Hopefully the employer will be sensible enough to ask you to work a purposeful shift.

At the outside, the employer could calculate the number of hours to work as 10% of 80% of 40 hours per week which works out to 3 hours and 12 minutes.  I would not expect the employer to think it that deeply.

However this progresses, I would take it as a positive sign they are opening up in some way and will be providing you with work - embrace that with enthusiasm and show that you are hungry to return to work and get back to normal.  Don't worry too much about how the furlough works so long as you receive your pay as you should do.

Good luck

Jeremy535897

If your employer asked you to work 4 hours, they would presumably pay you 4 hours at 100%, plus they could only claim 36 hours of furlough (for simplicity's sake: it may be a lot more complex), so even using their 10% figure (which is not the whole story by any means), to get those 4 hours of work out of you costs them 4 hours at 100% plus 10% of the 36 hours of furlough.

They cannot ask you to work 4 hours without pay and claim you are still fully furloughed, if that is the real question you are asking.

TBagpuss

As others have said, they can ask you to move to flexi furlough, working some but not full hours, but if so, they must pay you for the hours you work at your normal rate(unless of course you agreed a variation to your contract to change your pay) , and they cannot claim anything back for the hours you work.

For the hours you are still furloughed, they must pay you 80% of your normal pay and can then claim back 70% from the government, so instead of them simply paying your Tax, NI & pension they must cover Tax, NI and 10% of your normal pay, for any hours for which you are furloughed. 

Asking you to work 10% of your normal hours while still claiming through the furlough scheme for 100% of your normal hours would be fraud.

superbigal

As above i think it is likely your employer is suggesting they are going to commit fraud by having you working while claiming full furlough.

Grumpy_chap

TBagpuss said:

Asking you to work 10% of your normal hours while still claiming through the furlough scheme for 100% of your normal hours would be fraud.

IF this is what the employer is suggesting, there is not much the employee can do about it.  The employee still needs to do the work and assume that the employer is correctly following the rules, or risk losing their job.  In this scenario, any wrong-doing is that of the employer and the employee does not need to be concerned about a penalty being imposed on them by the authorities.

Obviously, the employee may wish to state, framed as a question, how they understand the furlough and pay works for flexi-furlough rather than the current full furlough.

I understand there is a reporting facility available for furlough fraud, but will the employer know the individual that made the report?

TBagpuss

Grumpy_chap said:

TBagpuss said:

Asking you to work 10% of your normal hours while still claiming through the furlough scheme for 100% of your normal hours would be fraud.

IF this is what the employer is suggesting, there is not much the employee can do about it.  The employee still needs to do the work and assume that the employer is correctly following the rules, or risk losing their job.  In this scenario, any wrong-doing is that of the employer and the employee does not need to be concerned about a penalty being imposed on them by the authorities.

Obviously, the employee may wish to state, framed as a question, how they understand the furlough and pay works for flexi-furlough rather than the current full furlough.

I understand there is a reporting facility available for furlough fraud, but will the employer know the individual that made the report?

Yes, it would the employer not the employee who would be at fault.

But also Op would not get what they were entitled to as they should get paid at their normal rate for any hours they actually work. 

Maybe raise it as asking for clarification and if they are suggesting that you work 10% of hours but they are still classing you are furloughed, respond as though it must be a misunderstanding - e.g. "Oh, we can't do that - I was reading about how it all works and that would be classed as fraud, because you can only claim furlough money for hours I'm not working. It's all really confusing and its' so easy to get mixed up, but I'm sure that 's not allowed  - we can do flexi-furlough where I work the 10% and you pay me normally for those hours, and then you pay me at 80% for the time i don't work, and claim most of that back through the scheme - let me know what hours you want and we can sign the appropriate letter to set it up" 

I think if they go ahead you can report it and that would be anonymous, although fo course depending on the size of the company they might guess or be suspicious .