Issues with with Next over contract

[Linda M]

Hi all. I was wondering if i could have some advice regarding my son and his contract with Next. My son applied for a part time job with Next for 8 hours a week, he got the position. He signed his contract on 11th December 2012. The first part of the contract reads "i am pleased to offer you the temp appointment of sales condultsnt with effect from 11/12/12 with Next Retail ltd. Your employment is anticipated to continue until 1/5/2013, however thismay vary according to the needs of the business". So he started and has been working there including a 7am start on Boxing Day, where he had to get up at 5am and walk 5 miles there and 5 miles back and no one in the house drives. He was on the rota to work saturday 10.30 until 3.30pm. He went and was sent home and told that he wasn't needed to work and given an authorised absense. He tried logging into the Next employee portal last night and he wasn't able to access it so he phoned the shop this morning. When he got through to the stockroom manager, he told him that his co ntract had ended. at this point i went on the phone and told him he was incorrect and read to him what the contract said. He then asked for my son and said he would ring back later in the day. Where does my son stand in all this legally? Thank you in advance

[Eloise01]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

Nowhere is, I am afraid, the answer. He has been employed for less than a month, and so the employer is entitled in law to terminate the contract without giving any notice. And the contract says nothing different - it say the employment was "anticipated" to last until May, not that it was guaranteed to last that long, and that the employment term would vary according to the needs of the business. He is entitled only to payment for the time that he has worked, and for any accrued holiday period. It may be worth contacting HR to check that there hasn't been some sort of error in the paperwork, but legally he doesn't have a led to stand on if the contract has indeed been terminated.

[TUTTSI]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

I agree with Eloise about this being only a temporary contract. It would have been nice if they told him face to face that the contract was terminated.

Has he been paid for all the work he has done?

Do phone the HR department and ask them to confirm what the situation is as well.

[Rights Seeker]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

Next Retail Ltd are still involved in the type of practices highlighted by Linda M two and a half years ago. I know somebody who was taken on by Next this month on a two-week temporary contract for the build up to the Next summer sale. This person was only guaranteed 3 hours work per week, although they were actually offered (and worked) many more hours per week than that.

All went well until the final day of this person's agreed contract, which coincided with the first day of the Next summer sale. A week earlier, Next had sent this person a copy of their rota, showing that the person was scheduled to work a full 6-hour shift on their final day of employment. When the last day came, Next tried to telephone the person just 3 hours before the start of their final shift to tell them not to bother to come in, but the person's phone was off at the time and the message wasn't received.

The person then turned up at Next for the start of their final shift and even clocked in before they were told by a manager that their shift had been cancelled. The reason given (unconvincingly) was that the first day of their sale had been quieter than expected and they had therefore had to cancel the shifts of this person and some other staff. As the person left the shop, they noticed that the store was very busy and that no other temps appeared to have had their shifts similarly cancelled. The person had already worked more than 20 hours for Next during that week but is angry about not being paid for their final shift, which was only cancelled on the day itself, based on rather spurious reasons.

Any opinions are welcome on the chances of this person having a valid claim against Next to be refunded for their final (unworked) 6-hour shift. What if this person had done the same thing to Next in reverse by failing to turn up for their final shift without prior notice on the first day of the summer sale? They expect many of their staff to start work at 5am in the morning on sale day and presumably they wouldn't be pleased if a lot of them just decided to stay in bed and not bother to turn up.

[teaboy2]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

[MENTION=55654]Rights Seeker[/MENTION]

This thread is over 2 years old, since last post. Whilst your post is informative, i feel its better to start a new thread than it is to bring old threads back on to the first page of the Employment Section, which in turn knocks newer threads further down in the pecking order, since threads at the top and the most recently created or most recently responded to threads.

Whether your friend would be entitled to pay for those 6hrs would depend on whether he had worked his contracted 3hrs or not for that week! And even if he hadn't he would only be able to claim for the 3 contracted hours under section 28 of the ERA 1996

[Rights Seeker]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

I am glad to report that Next Retail Ltd has now made a further payment into the bank account of the former temporary employee whose last shift in July 2015 was cancelled at very short notice (highlighted in my previous post dated 23rd July 2015). Although it's not entirely clear what that further payment is in respect of, it just happens to be the same amount that the employee would have earned if their last shift hadn't been cancelled. As a consequence, no further action will be taken and the matter is now resolved. Even better- Next Retail Ltd paid it without the ex-employee having to officially write to them about it.

For those temporary Next employees who find themselves in a similar position when their contract ends, it might be worth waiting up to a couple of weeks to see if any further payments are made into their bank accounts before taking the matter further - that is presuming they can afford to wait a couple of weeks of course.

Teaboy2- I don't agree that nobody should ever return to an old thread to add new comments, particularly when the subject matter of the new comments is the same or very similar to those previously posted. If everyone who has had a contract problem like this with Next started their own individual thread about Next, we might end up with half a dozen different threads about Next, all containing just a handful of replies before going dead. If I were to come across this thread started by Linda M in isolation, it would not alert me to the existence of other similar threads and those similar threads would require a lot more effort on my part to find.

On the other hand, if everyone who had a problem with Next similar to Linda M posted their problem on her thread, we might end up with a much better impression of just how widespread this type of treatment of Next temporary employees really is. Pressuring people not to post replies on a thread just because a certain (unstated) period of time has elapsed since the last comments were posted hardly encourages people to converse and freely share their opinions on a given topic.

[teaboy2]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

I am glad to report that Next Retail Ltd has now made a further payment into the bank account of the former temporary employee whose last shift in July 2015 was cancelled at very short notice (highlighted in my previous post dated 23rd July 2015). Although it's not entirely clear what that further payment is in respect of, it just happens to be the same amount that the employee would have earned if their last shift hadn't been cancelled. As a consequence, no further action will be taken and the matter is now resolved. Even better- Next Retail Ltd paid it without the ex-employee having to officially write to them about it.

For those temporary Next employees who find themselves in a similar position when their contract ends, it might be worth waiting up to a couple of weeks to see if any further payments are made into their bank accounts before taking the matter further - that is presuming they can afford to wait a couple of weeks of course.

Teaboy2- I don't agree that nobody should ever return to an old thread to add new comments, particularly when the subject matter of the new comments is the same or very similar to those previously posted. If everyone who has had a contract problem like this with Next started their own individual thread about Next, we might end up with half a dozen different threads about Next, all containing just a handful of replies before going dead. If I were to come across this thread started by Linda M in isolation, it would not alert me to the existence of other similar threads and those similar threads would require a lot more effort on my part to find.

On the other hand, if everyone who had a problem with Next similar to Linda M posted their problem on her thread, we might end up with a much better impression of just how widespread this type of treatment of Next temporary employees really is. Pressuring people not to post replies on a thread just because a certain (unstated) period of time has elapsed since the last comments were posted hardly encourages people to converse and freely share their opinions on a given topic.

My point was, that this thread belonged to Linda M, it was about her issue, not about other peoples issues (i.e. your friends) - On top of that it wasn't your friend posting or seeking help, it was merely yourself posting for your own reasons i.e. to highlight it is still on going. But the fact of the matter is, they haven't broken the law, as all your friend would have been entitled to would have been his contracted hours for that week. If he/she had already worked their contracted hours then they would not be contractually entitled to the 6hrs that they turned up to work but told they weren't needed for any longer - Therefore the company had retracted the offer of 6 additional hours by telling them they were no longer needed!

And now, as made clear in your last post, his/her last wage for that week was for 3hrs only - Confirming what i said that he/she would be entitled to pay for the contracted 3hrs only and not the 6 additional hours.

The reason we ask people not to post their issues on somebody elses thread, or not to bring up old threads, is so the too issues do not confuse the creator of the thread, and so that all advise being given is specific to the thread creators problem, its irrelevant if the issue is similar in nature. At the end of the day its called thread hi-jacking, or thread bumping the latter of the two results in an old inactive thread being bumped to the top of list of threads on page 1, knocking more recent and active threads down the queue and can result in a thread created by someone looking for advice, urgently in need of it, having their thread disappear from page 1 leading to us that do advise people to miss their thread.

Also i wasn't pressuring you in to not posting in old inactive threads, i merely asked you politely to not do so in future. Besides 1 other reasons you should create a new thread is because it helps with Google rankings and the new thread is more likely to appear on the 1st page of Google results than the old one is - Resulting in the new thread being seen by more people, then what replying to an old thread would!

[enaid]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

As it's very doubtful Linda M will return to this thread and the matter Rights Seeker posted on seems to be resolved I will leave the thread as it is.
We do encourage posters to start their own threads in the relevant forum as in some complex threads there can be literally thousands of replies and to try and help different people on such threads would be impossible.
We have a search facility to help find a specific subject and if you go to the correct forum you can scroll down to see relevant threads and have a read to see if you can be helped just by reading others posts.
I hope this explains things Rights Seeker.
Enaid x

[teaboy2]

Re: Issues with with Next over contract

Thank you [MENTION=141]enaid[/MENTION]