Under Contracted Hours

[pawel]

Good afternoon. Im working full time and have a permanent contract 40 hours a week. From begining of January my employer started cutting hours and so im doing 30 a week. I was told that next month will be the same.... This month i will get my basic pay (based on 40 hours) with a note stating amount of hours that i didnt do my contract against, same next moth with under hours added from this month. In march i will probably do bit over my contracted hours and once i go over they will deduct all missing hours from my salary in that month. Im bit worried because it will be like 80 hours or so. Can my employer do that?

Many Thanks

[CleverClogs]

Re: Under Contracted Hours

No.

There are limits to lawful deductions from remuneration.

I'll ask one or other of our experts to pop along to advise further.

[Amethyst]

Re: Under Contracted Hours

Are you paid a salary or weekly on an hourly rate? (ie. do you do time sheets or have a salary of £15k per annum)

Do you have a copy of your employment contract ?

Do you work in retail ?

Are they cutting hours due to need primarily or trying to cut the wage bill by cutting hours ?

( ACAS would be best people to speak to - Call their Helpline on 08457 47 47 47 for free and confidential advice )

[pawel]

Re: Under Contracted Hours

Hi. Thanks for quick reply. Im being paid monthly based on hours worked. I work in retail. This is chain of grocery discounts (not to mention any names. Every month they have to reach certain max hours used target against the sales. We are now planning to open bakery so they needed more staff. Bakery will open in april but they transferred 2 staff {contracted together to 70 hours a week, one 30 hour and one 40 hour contract) at the beginning of january, this is what caused problem with hours for basically everyone in the store except managers who are on salary. On my payslips every month it states basic and underneath there is overtime stated.

Thanks

[teaboy2]

Re: Under Contracted Hours

If you are contracted to 40 hours per week then that is the hours of work they must provide you, otherwise they are in breach of contract. If they wish you to work less hours, they must do either one of two things.

1 - Reduce your terms in your contract to 30 hours a week (they will need your signed agreement for this to happen)
2 - Ask you to work 30 hours but pay you for 40 hours - without any form of reductions from future pay, without your prior written consent - In other words they can not force you to take a cut in hours without changing your contract, by saying they will deduct over payments from weeks where you worked less hours, from pay for weeks where you worked more than 40 hours pay week without your written agreement.

Though i do have one very important questions, as the above all depends on the wording of the contract regarding contracted hours. Does the contract say up to 40 hours per week - Because if it says "up to" then can ask you to work 30 hours, though they can not force you to work additional hours in subsequent weeks to make up for the reduction of hours. They certainly can not deduct pay from weeks were you have worked 40 hours. So if you worked 30 hours one week, they they should pay you 30 hours not 40 hours, and they can not deduct 10 hours from a week where you have worked 40 hours or more to make up for the overpayment they made the week you worked 30 hours. There is TAX issues in what they are doing too and i would suggest you contact HRMC and explain what is happening to them as well.