Employment law - advice needed please.

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

The company that I currently work for (7 years, so far ) have decided that they are going to do a restructure in the retail part of the business. This affects me as they are now going to introduce a grading system and I have found out that my shop will be a grade that is 20% lower in pay than I am getting now. Even the top grade shop were I to take it would leave me 10% worse off. So I will be taking a pay cut for doing the same job. They want us to sign new contracts which although doing the same job, gives us less pay and different job titles. This restructure is not needed to save the company or save jobs but is totally done to boost profits. My questions are, is my current contract worthless? Can they reduce my wages as they propose? Am I obliged to sign a new contract? ( if they can just tear up my current contract then a new one will be equally worthless!! ) What are the consequences if I refuse to accept the new terms and contract? Many thanks.

 

[desprateseagull]

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=167 might be worth also asking on the MSE consumer forum, or local CAB..

 

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=167 might be worth also asking on the MSE consumer forum, or local CAB..

Thank you.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I think you are screwed - your company have completed a service review, and decided they want to change how they operate. Your present job will be deleted and replaced with a slightly - yet legally significantly - different one with new terms and conditions,hence a new contract. It is legal. My work have been doing this for the past three years every now and again. If you refuse to co-operate you have effectively made yourself redundant.

 

[EDS]

If you do not get an answer then PM me and I will contact the bloke I use for my contracts. He is away for the next two days though. The way I see it is they cannot force this upon you unless the business is in trouble and they need to do it for survival. I would think you can refuse to sign and there is not much they could do. I know you cannot just change someone's contract without their agreement. Then again it sounds like they are doing away with your role, but offering you work elsewhere, this is complicated ground and I am sure they have taken advice themselves.
The fact I have to employ someone to do all this for me though proves I know pretty much sweet fa, not definitively anyway

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

Went through 2 restructuring exercises at BT. If it wasn't for the union negotiating on our behalf we would have been totally screwed over.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I think you are screwed - your company have completed a service review, and decided they want to change how they operate. Your present job will be deleted and replaced with a slightly - yet legally significantly - different one with new terms and conditions,hence a new contract. It is legal. My work have been doing this for the past three years every now and again. If you refuse to co-operate you have effectively made yourself redundant.

I don't think anyone can "make themselves redundant". I would say that the options are:-

1. To accept what the company has offered you - continued employment, at lower pay;
2. To refuse the offer and oblige the company to make you redundant - with an entitlement to proper notice and statutory redundancy pay;
3. To use the period of consultation (which the company is obliged to provide) to argue for a different outcome to what has been offered - much easier with a public sector employer than a private sector retailer.

If you are confident of finding alternative employment quickly (in this economic climate?), option 2 can be attractive. If not, then you'll probably find that most of your co-workers will go for option 1 and your ability to work your way through option 3 is greatly reduced.

Once upon a time, everyone would be advising you that the scenario you are facing was the reason for the workforce to belong to a well-organised Trade Union. But, hey! that's old-hat nonsense isn't it?

 

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

If you do not get an answer then PM me and I will contact the bloke I use for my contracts. He is away for the next two days though. The way I see it is they cannot force this upon you unless the business is in trouble and they need to do it for survival. I would think you can refuse to sign and there is not much they could do. I know you cannot just change someone's contract without their agreement. Then again it sounds like they are doing away with your role, but offering you work elsewhere, this is complicated ground and I am sure they have taken advice themselves.
The fact I have to employ someone to do all this for me though proves I know pretty much sweet fa, not definitively anyway

Cheers.
The size of my company indicates to me that they would indeed have covered every eventuality with regards to this matter. However I have read that I can write a letter of protest,this involves letting my company know and to carry on working under my current terms and object to the new terms, this will only work for a short period of time as after a while the law would look at it that I have accepted the new role. I have also read that someone in a similar situation says that your current pay is protected for one year and that by having this ' protection ' gives you time to find another job. It's this sort of useful information that I need to gather to go armed when consultation begins. I meen if indeed your pay is protected for one year, it stinks that the company have not informed anyone and that a lot of people will take a pay cut when they needn't have done.

 

[Beach Hut]

This happened recently to a mate of mine and they gradually reduced his pay over a year and agreed his pension contribution remained the same, I am not sure what you can actually do about this situation bar what is stated above.

 

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

I think you are screwed - your company have completed a service review, and decided they want to change how they operate. Your present job will be deleted and replaced with a slightly - yet legally significantly - different one with new terms and conditions,hence a new contract. It is legal. My work have been doing this for the past three years every now and again. If you refuse to co-operate you have effectively made yourself redundant.

If so, then I will make sure I go putting up a fight.

 

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

I don't think anyone can "make themselves redundant". I would say that the options are:-

1. To accept what the company has offered you - continued employment, at lower pay;
2. To refuse the offer and oblige the company to make you redundant - with an entitlement to proper notice and statutory redundancy pay;
3. To use the period of consultation (which the company is obliged to provide) to argue for a different outcome to what has been offered - much easier with a public sector employer than a private sector retailer.

If you are confident of finding alternative employment quickly (in this economic climate?), option 2 can be attractive. If not, then you'll probably find that most of your co-workers will go for option 1 and your ability to work your way through option 3 is greatly reduced.

Once upon a time, everyone would be advising you that the scenario you are facing was the reason for the workforce to belong to a well-organised Trade Union. But, hey! that's old-hat nonsense isn't it?

Great advice. Thank you.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Whatever you do, make sure that you don't "resign". If you're going to leave, get them to dismiss you.

 

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

Whatever you do, make sure that you don't "resign". If you're going to leave, get them to dismiss you.

Cheers. Indeed they will have to dismiss me, I have no intention of going quietly.

 

[Machiavelli]

I don't think anyone can "make themselves redundant". I would say that the options are:-

1. To accept what the company has offered you - continued employment, at lower pay;
2. To refuse the offer and oblige the company to make you redundant - with an entitlement to proper notice and statutory redundancy pay;
3. To use the period of consultation (which the company is obliged to provide) to argue for a different outcome to what has been offered - much easier with a public sector employer than a private sector retailer.

If you are confident of finding alternative employment quickly (in this economic climate?), option 2 can be attractive. If not, then you'll probably find that most of your co-workers will go for option 1 and your ability to work your way through option 3 is greatly reduced.

Once upon a time, everyone would be advising you that the scenario you are facing was the reason for the workforce to belong to a well-organised Trade Union. But, hey! that's old-hat nonsense isn't it?

Lord Bracknell is quite correct in what he says, especially in the last part. Have you ever wondered why median pay -- not to mention living standards, and especially not working conditions, as The Andy Naylor Fan Club situation so perfectly illustrates -- has been falling in this country for the past ten years and that this trend is set to continue and deteriorate into the future. This has been going on in the US since the 1980s. One day more people will recognise this, but I fear we'll have a long wait.

My union last engaged in industrial action seven years ago, and this managed to secure a 10% pay rise. Since then, we've had a series of below-inflation pay rises (ie real pay cuts) which amounts to a 13% pay cut. We're currently engaging in industrial action and I expect this to win back some of the pay we've lost over the last few years. Fortunately, I work in a sector that still has dense union membership.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

I wonder if it's possible to get better than the statutory minimum redundancy pay out of a situation like this.

For example - get the employer to calculate redundancy pay on the basis of, say, doubling the number of years of employment that go into the calculation, or - if you earn more than £23,400 a year - removing the £450 a week "cap" on qualifying earnings.

https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

 

[Bry Nylon]

This is another sign of companies in the retail, services and agricultural sectors rubbing their hands and gearing up for the end of the year when our Bulgarian and Romanian friends gain the same right to work in the UK as other EU citizens.

Tens of thousands of young, educated and ambitious Bulgarians and Romanians with excellent English and a willingness to work for buttons, given the disparity between UK wages and those available back home, will be arriving in 2014 and you can understand why the big to medium-sized employers in the sectors they are likely to look for work in are taking the opportunity to diminish existing terms and conditions.

 

[The Andy Naylor Fan Club]

I wonder if it's possible to get better than the statutory minimum redundancy pay out of a situation like this.

For example - get the employer to calculate redundancy pay on the basis of, say, doubling the number of years of employment that go into the calculation, or - if you earn more than £23,400 a year - removing the £450 a week "cap" on qualifying earnings.

https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

When I posted that I have been employed by them for seven years, that is how long I have actually worked for them but they took over my previous company and also took on my contract, so does that mean that my employment would go back to 2002 when I started with my original company?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

When I posted that I have been employed by them for seven years, that is how long I have actually worked for them but they took over my previous company and also took on my contract, so does that mean that my employment would go back to 2002 when I started with my original company?

Could well be.

Your contract of employment should have a sentence that starts with words something like:- "Your continuous employment dates from .... " This could easily be the date of the original contract that was taken over (ie recognised) by your current employer.

 

[newhaven seagull 85]

When I posted that I have been employed by them for seven years, that is how long I have actually worked for them but they took over my previous company and also took on my contract, so does that mean that my employment would go back to 2002 when I started with my original company?

you should have received a letter at the time telling you that they had taken over your employment, and your employment start date was the date when you first started with your previous employer.
If not then you will have to show the continuous employment.

 

[drew]

Whatever you do, make sure that you don't "resign". If you're going to leave, get them to dismiss you.

My advice would be to take some proper legal advice, possible from Citizens advice. There is another option and that is to write saying you don't accept the new terms and then leave. You would then be able to take them to a tribunal for constructive dismissal. However, get the legal advice first. I was in a similar situation about 20 years ago when my company withdrew 5% of our salary which was paid as a lump sum. I issued IT papers and got lots of advice from CAB however, I got a better job before it got to the tribunal.