Maternity Leave - Returning problems

bigneacy

My OH is about to return off maternity leave. Her department has been downsized, she's now the only one left all others have been made redundant. She was not informed of this until last week. Her hours were very specific and confined to evenings only. Now they are asking her to start earlier and finish earlier, meaning she'll be losing about 1/4 of her wages per week due to the loss of a shift allowance.

Aside from the money the new hours don't suit. She just wanted to go back to the same hours as before or if her job is no longer there then take the redundancy. What should we do?

bigneacy

Anyone have any idea?

DM addict

Kinda difficult to say without knowing more about the situation.

Can she afford to take the new position with lower wages?

What kind of redundancy package would she get, and would that be a reasonable option financially - especially considering in this climate it's not always easy to get a new job?

What's the job situation like in her industry? Is she likely to find a position with similar pay/hours/etc to what she has now, or at least sufficiently favourable hours?

If the nature of the job has changed due to downsizing, I guess there's probably no way for her to get her old hours back. If she'd rather not work the new hours, then I guess that redundancy is the option - but personally I'd rather be working than not, especially coming back from maternity - that is, unless the redundancy option is particularly generous.

Kinet1c

It'll be down to her employment contract. Shift allowance is generally not guaranteed and it'll be written in the contract that her hours can be changed. Check the contract again and again.

Shelflife

Depends on her contract, but also depends on how long she was working those specific hours without a change.

Im open to correction , but if your OH was working those hours for a number of years then they could, could i repeat be deemed to be her standard hours and any deviation from that would have to0 be renegotiated as part of her contract.

Nody

Shelflife wrote: »

Depends on her contract, but also depends on how long she was working those specific hours without a change.

Im open to correction , but if your OH was working those hours for a number of years then they could, could i repeat be deemed to be her standard hours and any deviation from that would have to0 be renegotiated as part of her contract.

I'm not sure I'd agree; they can offer her a contract that's not

the terms or conditions of the contract relating to the place where the work under it is required to be done, the capacity in which the employee concerned is to be employed and any other terms or conditions of employment are not substantially less favourable to the employee than those of her contract of employment immediately before the start of the period of absence from work while on protective leave.

The fact there's no shift work and hence she can't be offered shift work is something I'd have a hard time to see as substantially less favourable.

tricky D

Shelflife wrote: »

Depends on her contract, but also depends on how long she was working those specific hours without a change.

Im open to correction , but if your OH was working those hours for a number of years then they could, could i repeat be deemed to be her standard hours and any deviation from that would have to0 be renegotiated as part of her contract.

I've been in a somewhat analogous situation like this before. It's called Contract by Practice. In my case I had been working in roles XYZ and the company then changed the structures leaving me only doing XY and part of my renumeration was adjusted. However as I had been doing Z for over 2 years I was entitled to be paid for that as it was the company which made the changes resulting in a disadvantage for me without any renegotiation. This was all despite role Z never having been covered in the original written contract. In my case it was over extra money for an extra role allowances which might not be the same as hours allowances.

Bandana boy

I know in the past my company made an entire department redundant when one of the team was on maternity leave.
They waited until she was offically back and then made her redundant too.
Not sure if this was too see if she would quit on her own (% of maternity leaves never return in any bussiness ) and save money or a legal requirment.