Looking at alternatives to Redundancy
Current financial cutbacks mean that employers are looking at ways of preventing
redundancies to avoid the costs of redundancy pay and losing skilled staff. One
option employers are considering is reducing the working week on a temporary
basis.
In employment law terms reducing the working
week on a temporary basis is referred to as lay off or
short-time working and it involves certain
obligations that an employer should watch out for.
Lay off is a temporary situation where there is no
work for the employee to do and so no pay is
provided. To be able to lay off staff, employers need
a contractual right, either a lay off clause in the
contract of employment (common in manufacturing
where there are peaks and troughs in the amount of
work available) or to agree a period of lay off with
the employees on an individual basis before lay off
begins. In unionised environments there may be a
right to lay off already in a collective agreement or
the changes could be negotiated with the union. In
certain industries there may be an implied right to
lay off if the employer has regularly laid staff off
when no work is coming in.
This is just the start of the article, to view the full colour PDF please log in to the Members Only Area by clicking here