bank bonus dilemma

That's not what I was told by a solictor when my employer changed my contract unilaterally. He said my options were to accept it or resign.

Did you pay him? What a waste

Well yes they are (at the top) but if the bank is bust they would, by definition, not have the money to pay these wages.

In this instance HMG picks up the bill for unpaid wages. But it only pays basic wages, nothing else.

tim

changed in what way?

This certainly isn't true if the change is (downwards) to the amount that you were paid.

tim

They can't change it unilaterally. But they can of course terminate it (contracts can usually be terminated by either party subject to specified notice). So they can, subject to varies rules, give you your notice to terminate your contract and at the same time offer you a different contract, with different rules, from the termination date. Whether you accept or not it up to you.

What they can't do is make retrospective changes - eg if your contract states you'll get paid 10% of your sales in the calendar year on 1 March the following year, they can't decide not to pay you what you've already earned as bonus. They can give notice, as above, and offer you a new contract that says the bonus is discretionary etc, but that'll only apply to future bonus accrual.

That doesn't follow at all. The banks would be bust because they couldn't repay or refinance maturing loans when they become due. It doesn't follow that the banks have no assets at all and no ability to pay the outstanding wages.

(If you are saying that the banks would only be bust once their assets would only cover liabilities that come ahead of employees wages then I'll accept that but it isn't obvious to me that that would be the case. Indeed, IIUC, wasn't there a bank that went bust where significant amounts of cash had been transferred from London to NY the night before. Had it stayed in London the employees would have had first call on that money for their wages?)

Tim.

That's incorrect. Your options are to agree to the change or to reject it. Whilst you can resign if you wish, a unilateral change of terms which is unacceptable *can* amount to constructive dismissal, especially if not much notice is given. There would need to be a fair offer of compensation on the table, and resigning would make you ineligible for this.

IIRC they just presented me with a new contract. There were various changes in it from the old one. The only thing I was concerned about was they were adding restrictions to what I could do after leaving them.

It did not affect my pay.

You certainly have a right to reject that change.

The type of changes that I was thinking of which might be unilaterally enforceable are small changes in working hours.

tim

Nothing is unilaterally enforceable. But working hours (by which I take it you mean timings rather than quantity) may well not be one of the details which are directly regulated by the contract. For example it is not uncommon for a contract to say that your hours are as may from time to time be determined by your head of department, in which case you would have no right to reject a change in hours (because it wouldn't involve changing the actual contract) unless it were clearly unreasonable, such as if you've been accustomed to 9-5 working and then suddenly someone thinks it might be a good idea to put you on night shifts.

In message , tim..... writes

Correct. ;-)

In message , Martin writes

I know, but I had already deployed my parachute, and it was only through the efforts of the union rep that I got the chance of a 6 months probation period for the job I had already been offered. Others who took it personally went down the pan.

In message , Fergus O'Rourke writes

Only if you can afford them! Hence the fear of wealthy execs suing. The working clarses have no chance.

It happens in companies working on secure stuff, as well as in lots of IT jobs - a few minutes of disgruntlement can cause a lot of pain for a company.

Although there are apocryphal tales of sysadmins putting 'dead mans switches' in place so that in the event of a quick exit 'things' happen, but only after a suitable length of time...

I worked as a programmer at ICL at one time, AIKWYM. :-)