Urgent Employment legal advice
 

My sister has seen an Email from one of her bosses to another saying he wants to have a meeting with her tomorrow to discuss cutting her wages by £6k. So far they have not mentioned this to her at all. Can they do this without changing her job? offering her redundancy ? She want info so she knows how to deal with it when they 'spring' it on her tomorrow. She had recently had 6 weeks off work following an operation (on full pay which they 'seemed' fine about) but she didn't get any Xmas bonus which she was expecting.
The company is doing well - one boss bought himself an Aston Martin with part of his Xmas bonus, the other got a BMW M5!

This seems to contain some useful information:

What if we can't agree? | Business Link

HTH.

John.

Normally, it's not possible to reduce a salary if they continue to do the same job, hours, location etc. However, it is possible to decrease a salary with the full consent of the individual (where the individual may get sweetneers, like an increased pension contribution, bonus etc). Indeed, salary sacrifice is nothing new.

Could it have been a wind-up, with the manager who sent the email knowing she might see it??

It's very difficult to prepare for a meeting which you don't know you're going to have!

Unlikely to be a wind-up....

in short, yes they can

there are many many ways they can do this, it all depends on if they go about it the 'correct' way, or just use bully boy tactics

I have quite a bit of experience of this, having been on a similar receiving end of the situation more than once

I now work for a different company ;)

Let us know what happens in the end eh.

Does it not border on constructive dismissal? By reducing her wage effectively they are putting her in a position whereby she will quit?

A friend works in sales and her boss decided to slash her basic by half down to 12K, she wasn't hitting target but not by much... Anyway she was signed off sick due to the stress and during this time consulted a solicitor - they didn't have a leg to stand on and had a very good chance of winning at an industrial tribual. They put her basic back up and reduced her target to a much more realistic level to avoid it being taken further.

If she has not done anything wrong - had warnings etc. I think they would be in a pretty bad position if they reduced the wages just like that! If there is more to it... then who knows.

What is pretty certain is that they can't just spring it on you. I would go to the meeting take notes and if it seems that they are trying to pull a fast one 'one on one', stop the meeting and ask that a colleague be brought into the meeting so that there is an impartial witness and insist that there is someone from HR to take minutes.

This might also help Employment

Best of luck

Richard

Update.

Very complicated...sister is currently paid her salery from 2 different companys. The company now about to take full responsibility for paying her wont pay as much as she was getting before . In effect the other company paying her is making her redundant. So the 'new' company expects her to do exactly the same job but for less money than before. She threatened them with legal action for constructive dismissal and got another meeting on Monday..

So it's not a drop in salary, but a rise in duties required by the second company? Can that be argued as being the same thing?

Best of luck - sounds complex! Get as much info from them in writing and if she's not happy with their offer, go see a solicitor.

Result - of sorts. After a lot of legal stuff she's been offered £30,000 as redundancy despite the fact they still insist they dont want her to go. But if that was really the case they could have kept her for several more years by just replacing the £6 they were taking off and still been in profit.....