Cash at work

Work writes

Neasa MacErlean tackles your problems in the office

I have been working in my current job as a home care provider for 19 years. I work each afternoon. My colleagues and I are being asked to agree to a 'variation' of the contract, which could mean working at weekends, at night or in the evenings. What can we do?

If you have a union, it could play a crucial role in negotiating over this issue. Even if you have no union, you would be a much more powerful voice if you and your colleagues combined forces rather than letting yourselves be drawn into individual discussions.

You could start by looking at your employment contract. If clauses known as 'mobility' and 'variation' clauses are in the contract, your employers will have an easier time pushing through changes, because they will have reserved the right to vary your contract (subject to a duty to be reasonable) or to ask you to work from other locations. But if yours is an older contract, it could well be that no such clauses exist.

Your employer would, therefore, need to negotiate with you. They would need to argue that they wanted the changes for genuine business reasons and they would also have to conduct discussions with you fairly and openly. If they fell short in either of these, an employment tribunal would take a dim view of their approach. So, for instance, you or your representatives could discuss the reasons in detail and seek together to keep the disruption to individual workers to a minimum. Saying you may be required to work any time of night or day does not sound reasonable. Suggestions from you and your union might be helpful - new shift arrangements, limits on hours people are expected to work at weekends, and so on.

But this is, actually, a very complicated issue requiring good negotiating skills, experience and a good understanding of the law. A union should be able to provide these. There could, for example, be sex discrimination issues if most of the home care workers are female.

· Legal advice from Thomas Eggar Church Adams. If you have a work problem, write to Neasa MacErlean at Cash, The Observer, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER.

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