Pandemic – Know Your Rights

News

4 years ago

Our Court Partner, Tony Anderson discusses employment rights during the pandemic.

Pandemic is straight out of a sci fi movie you find on Netflix on a rainy Saturday and Zoom a song by Fat Larry’s Band back in the day … now they are our vernacular!

We are where we are with every one of us grappling with face masks, curfews and garden visits to our kith and kin.

While our beloved rural Fife shire has fortunately escaped the worst with less people falling to the illness, we have sadly not escaped job loss casualties.

Within weeks of national lockdown, I was inundated with enquiries from employers and employees initially about the furlough scheme followed by redundancy queries and then (unfair) dismissals.

It is really important you know your rights under an employment contact and that your employer cannot change its terms without your consent. Perhaps not surprisingly I saw no contract which actually made provision for lay off or furlough – employees affected need to consent to vary their contract enabling them to be furloughed first of all.

Whether you are an employer or employee in this global pandemic and you may not know if you are getting out to play on a Friday after work, you should always know what your rights are in your contract.

If you do not, give us a call or ping us an email …. What this pandemic is doing is chaining us to a home/office laptop where advice can readily be dispensed by email, phone or dare I say it … zoom.