full to part time

[nearlyretired]

I have been working for my present employer for 20 years I am 3 years away from retirement.

Via my employer I have been working for another company for these 20 years (in effect as a contractor), full time 37 hours per week. I am in a final salary pension scheme.

I think that this company now wants to "employ" me part time 2 or 3 days per week instead of full time. I am happy with this but would need to retire , get made redundant or in some other way take my pension and then continue part time.

Can anyone tell me if my employer can just reduce my hours to (say) 20 per week - without my approval or giving me early retirement or making me redundant?

Both of these companies are large global companies.

[yorkshirejames]

Your employee can put any change of circumstances to you and ask you to accept them. If you refuse, reasonableness of both parties would come into it.

As this is a drastic change, then I would say you would be perfectly correct to refuse it.

Do you _want_ to be made redundant from the first company (perhaps for pension reasons)? Are the companies proposing that you work direct with the second company?

[nearlyretired]

Do you _want_ to be made redundant from the first company (perhaps for pension reasons)?


Yes - though I would rather continue full time for 3 years.



Are the companies proposing that you work direct with the second company?

No - but I would be happy to do so.

What I was concerned about was whether I could be forced into working part - time without the opportunity to be given terms or to be made redundant.

[sjbeale]

Your employer would need to consult with you and get your agreement to the new hours. If your employer wants to cut your hours and you don't agree you could take them to a tribunal for unfair dismissal as they would be effectively dismissing you from your old full time contract and placing you on a new part time contract without your agreement.

It would be best to explore the options in terms of being made redundant or taking your pension early then returning on reduced hours in which case you would need to see if your pension would allow you to do this.