Unfairness At Work

[cat woman]

I work in a sandwich bar in our town it is run by husband & wife. We have a student working for us who is a nice girl, the problem is when it goes quiet in the afternoon the husband sends one of us home early, and its never this student. Its causing a bad atmosphere now as all us other women have a home to run and need the the hours contracted to us.One of the women is a widow so its her only income and she has started to ring me at home after work because she is so worried about her financial affairs, she is a very quiet woman who dosen,t stick up for herself not like the rest of us who will bite back. yesturday the boss said to one of the other women who does the sandwich round ( after she refused to be sent home and mentioned her contracted hours to him ) said he could change her contract to suit the situation, surely he cant do this!   The ironically we have found out they are selling the business they think we dont know and we have,nt let on. I think by the end of the week this situation will come to a head, and one of us us going to blow, in who,s favour that we will have to find out but it can,t go on for much longer for all our sake of minds

[willow74]

if you are contracted to a certain amount of hours and are available to work those hours then they are obliged to pay you for those hours.  surely they cant send you home and dock your pay if its quiet.

i would ring the citizens advice bureau

[acw]

Good luck.  When you go to the CAB, you need to know exactly what your question is.  If they sell the business, the new owners have to keep you on (under the TUPE Regulations - CAB will explain more) - so if you'd like clarification on that they will help.  However there's hardly a question in your question - although I can totally see why you needed to get it off your chest and have a rant - it sounds a really horrid situation!

[flashpig]

One of the places I worked in changed hands and one of the people who had been working there for some time was helped by the CAB to get a better contract from the new company. It was a large chain, and they had hoped to put all sorts of clauses in his new contract including one about being relocated at their wish,and they had branches hundres of miles away. CAB are pretty nice folks from the sound of it. Talk to them and I hope your newer employers are nicer.

[curiosity]

Is the student getting paid less than the regular workers?

[acw]

That would explain a lot, curiosity.  I work for agencies.  Although we don't earn more than other staff, we cost a lot more (agency fees etc) so we're always first to get sent home if there's an early close.  It would explain their logic, and perhaps show that there's no malice in it.