Reducing hours at work

Flugelhorn

employers will do what suits them - and agree they may think that if they refuse she will retire,
I had the opposite - had been TUPEd into an organisation and was paid more that my colleagues (was also salaried and not sessional) - I asked to reduce hours , they made a show of "we'll have to have a meeting etc etc ) but were clearly falling over themselves to agree as it saved them £££

WYSPECIAL

crosswords said:

My Mum wants to reduce her hours at work but they have refused. She is now of retirement age. My sister is of the understanding that once retirement age has been reached they *must* agree to her request. I'm struggling to find anything online that states this, just various people saying they only have to give it reasonable consideration. 

Who will do the work and hours your mother wishes to drop?
 If you want to go down to 50% of full time then it would probably be easy enough to recruit for the other 50%.
 If you want to drop one day a week who would want a one day a week contract and how efficient would they be?
It's best to put suggestions as to how it could be covered in your business case when you make a request.

crosswords

WYSPECIAL said:

crosswords said:

My Mum wants to reduce her hours at work but they have refused. She is now of retirement age. My sister is of the understanding that once retirement age has been reached they *must* agree to her request. I'm struggling to find anything online that states this, just various people saying they only have to give it reasonable consideration. 

Who will do the work and hours your mother wishes to drop?
 If you want to go down to 50% of full time then it would probably be easy enough to recruit for the other 50%.
 If you want to drop one day a week who would want a one day a week contract and how efficient would they be?
It's best to put suggestions as to how it could be covered in your business case when you make a request.

That's a great point, thanks

la531983

sammyjammy said:

There is a rule with CS pension that if you take it and continue to work you are not allowed to earn more than your full time wage altogether but thats not relevant to whether an employer can accommodate the reduction in hours, its entirely separate and a CS employer can still say no to part time hours if there are business reasons.

Yes I do concede it's only a small subset of pensions but as the OP didn't tell us who the employer, it was worth suggesting.

xylophone

She is now of retirement age. 

Do you mean that your mother is a member of a defined benefit pension scheme and has reached scheme retirement age (the age at which she may take her pension without actuarial reduction)?

She wishes to draw the pension and continue to work but on slightly(?)/substantially(?) fewer hours?

The employer would offer a full time but not part time position?

Has she obtained a state pension forecast?

https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

zagubov

There's a similar situation in at least parts of the education sector.
If you retire past your pension age you can only work part-time to prevent your total income being greater than your salary of reference when you were working.
In the public sector, your employer may be able to refuse the first time you ask, but may be forced to accommodate you if you re-apply after a certain time (maybe a year).
Her union might be more knowledgable than HR.

katejo

la531983 said:

There are often rules that state if you take the workplace pension and continue working for the same employer you HAVE to reduce your hours or seniority, does that apply in this case?

I haven't heard that. I am 60 and have just started to reduce my hours (4 day week now) but have no plans to access my pension (public sector SAUL) until I actually retire. 

hugheskevi

sammyjammy said:

There is a rule with CS pension that if you take it and continue to work you are not allowed to earn more than your full time wage altogether but thats not relevant to whether an employer can accommodate the reduction in hours, its entirely separate and a CS employer can still say no to part time hours if there are business reasons.

Just to elaborate on this, the policy of 'abatement' which you outline above only applies to the 1972 scheme ("Classic"), the 2002 scheme ("Premium") and the 2007 Scheme ("Nuvos").

It does not feature in the 2015 Scheme ("Alpha"), so is now a legacy arrangement - albeit one which will take decades to work out of the system.