Abercrombie and others v Aga Rangemaster Ltd UKEAT/0099/12
Where an employer fails to provide work for an employee who would normally be required to work in accordance with his contract of employment the employee is entitled to a statutory guaranteed payment. In this case, however, the employment tribunal found that the employees had agreed a temporary variation to their normal working hours which meant that they had ceased to work on Fridays for several months and this precluded them from being entitled to a guarantee payment.
The employees had voted in favour of a temporary reduction in working hours to avoid a redundancy exercise. Their working hours were compressed into four days. Aga declined to give them a guaranteed payment on the grounds that there had been an agreed variation of their working terms. Unfortunately for the employees the tribunal and EAT agreed.
Key point: Where there is an agreement to varying working patterns, that pattern will become the standard and employees should be aware of this if they are to reach an agreement on short term working as otherwise it will disentitle them to guaranteed payments.
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