Part-time has fewer rights than Full.

ThisIsWeird

Hi.

Situation with a local company. Around 20 employees, with roughly a half-dozen being part-time to a greater or lesser degree.

The part-timers are contracted pro-rata, so their salary, holiday entitlement, and everything else is calculated as a direct %-age of the full time rate.

The company has been looking at making changes to improve the working conditions for their workers, and their recent suggestion is to reduce the working week from 39.5 to 38 hours for all full-time staff, and this will mean that the Friday working day will now end at midday rather than the current 3pm. The full-time employees will have to have attained the new 38 hours each week for this, of course.

Nice - this is effectively a 4% reduction in the working week.

Except for the part-time employees, for whom they are suggesting that nothing will change. So, the P-T employees will be expected to continue on their existing hourly amount, which equals to a 4% shortfall in either salary or hourly rate compared to their full-time colleagues.

Thoughts?

Thanks :-)

Marcon

ThisIsWeird said:

Hi.

Situation with a local company. Around 20 employees, with roughly a half-dozen being part-time to a greater or lesser degree.

The part-timers are contracted pro-rata, so their salary, holiday entitlement, and everything else is calculated as a direct %-age of the full time rate.

The company has been looking at making changes to improve the working conditions for their workers, and their recent suggestion is to reduce the working week from 39.5 to 38 hours for all full-time staff, and this will mean that the Friday working day will now end at midday rather than the current 3pm. The full-time employees will have to have attained the new 38 hours each week for this, of course.

Nice - this is effectively a 4% reduction in the working week.

Except for the part-time employees, for whom they are suggesting that nothing will change. So, the P-T employees will be expected to continue on their existing hourly amount, which equals to a 4% shortfall in either salary or hourly rate compared to their full-time colleagues.

Thoughts?

Thanks :-)

If 'full time' hours change then part-timers need to be pro-rated on the new full time hours.

turnitround

If the full time workers are only going to have the hours reduced by 1.5hours how will they be finishing 3 hours early on a Friday?

theoretica

If someome is on 19.75 hours that is currently half time.  Under the new scheme they won't be half time, but 52% - if they keep the same hours.  So the prorata pay and holidays needs to increase.  Or they go to 19 hours and stay half time.

Part time workers have specific protection from being discriminated against.  Hopefully this has just been poorly communicated or not finished thinking it through.

General_Grant

So it seems the hourly rate of pay for full-time staff will increase.

Holiday for the part-timers (in terms of hours of paid leave) should increase in proportion but the OP seems to be concerned only with the hourly rate.

Are all those 20 employees currently on the same rate of pay?

ThisIsWeird

turnitround said:

If the full time workers are only going to have the hours reduced by 1.5hours how will they be finishing 3 hours early on a Friday?

They will have to make up the required 1.5 hours during the week - there is flexibility for when they do this, outwith the required hours per day.

ThisIsWeird

Thank you Marcon and Theoretica.

theoretica said:

1) Part time workers have specific protection from being discriminated against.  

2) Hopefully this has just been poorly communicated or not finished thinking it through.

1) Thanks - I think that 'd' comment has nailed it.

2) There is that possibility, but it has actually been fed back to staff from management as the part-time situation being unchanged. Apparently a bit of a jaw-drop when they were challenged on this, and a scurry back to the conference room.

I'm anticipating hearing over the next few days that they accept they made an error. But, my gawd, how naive?

I've since read that - should they not address the matter - the procedure is to request in writing their explanation for the discrimination. That should be fun.

ThisIsWeird

General_Grant said:

So it seems the hourly rate of pay for full-time staff will increase. Effectively, yes, by around 4%
Holiday for the part-timers (in terms of hours of paid leave) should increase in proportion but the OP seems to be concerned only with the hourly rate. They are concerned with both matters. If the part-time hours remain the same - which is what's proposed - then the holiday entitlement should increase as a percentage, and ditto the actual salary.
Are all those 20 employees currently on the same rate of pay? No.

Answers - ttbomk - in bold.

Marcon

ThisIsWeird said:

Thank you Marcon and Theoretica.

theoretica said:

1) Part time workers have specific protection from being discriminated against.  

2) Hopefully this has just been poorly communicated or not finished thinking it through.

1) Thanks - I think that 'd' comment has nailed it.

2) There is that possibility, but it has actually been fed back to staff from management as the part-time situation being unchanged. Apparently a bit of a jaw-drop when they were challenged on this, and a scurry back to the conference room.

I'm anticipating hearing over the next few days that they accept they made an error. But, my gawd, how naive?

I've since read that - should they not address the matter - the procedure is to request in writing their explanation for the discrimination. That should be fun.

Much more common than you'd expect, particularly in such a small firm which is highly unlikely to have a specialist HR function. 

ThisIsWeird

Marcon said:

ThisIsWeird said:

Thank you Marcon and Theoretica.

theoretica said:

1) Part time workers have specific protection from being discriminated against.  

2) Hopefully this has just been poorly communicated or not finished thinking it through.

1) Thanks - I think that 'd' comment has nailed it.

2) There is that possibility, but it has actually been fed back to staff from management as the part-time situation being unchanged. Apparently a bit of a jaw-drop when they were challenged on this, and a scurry back to the conference room.

I'm anticipating hearing over the next few days that they accept they made an error. But, my gawd, how naive?

I've since read that - should they not address the matter - the procedure is to request in writing their explanation for the discrimination. That should be fun.

Much more common than you'd expect, particularly in such a small firm which is highly unlikely to have a specialist HR function. 

Thanks. But they do have an HR manager... :-(

It is sadly not untypical.

Anyhoo, I'll update the thread when I hear more :-)

Many thanks, and I've passed the info on, and it corresponds with what the employee has also found for themselves.

Andy_L

ThisIsWeird said:

Marcon said:

ThisIsWeird said:

Thank you Marcon and Theoretica.

theoretica said:

1) Part time workers have specific protection from being discriminated against.  

2) Hopefully this has just been poorly communicated or not finished thinking it through.

1) Thanks - I think that 'd' comment has nailed it.

2) There is that possibility, but it has actually been fed back to staff from management as the part-time situation being unchanged. Apparently a bit of a jaw-drop when they were challenged on this, and a scurry back to the conference room.

I'm anticipating hearing over the next few days that they accept they made an error. But, my gawd, how naive?

I've since read that - should they not address the matter - the procedure is to request in writing their explanation for the discrimination. That should be fun.

Much more common than you'd expect, particularly in such a small firm which is highly unlikely to have a specialist HR function. 

Thanks. But they do have an HR manager... :-(

It is sadly not untypical.

Anyhoo, I'll update the thread when I hear more :-)

Many thanks, and I've passed the info on, and it corresponds with what the employee has also found for themselves.

It's possible that the HR manager pointed it out but was ignored with "they won't know, let's have a punt and see if we get away with it. We can always pretend ignorance if they call us on it"

ETA sometime it actually is malice rather than incompetence