Interim advice on UCL workload and timetable changes (August 2022)

Contractual rights

• Changes can only be made by agreement – and you have the right to say No. UCL managers do not have a right to unilaterally change working hours of staff. Your historic hours of work, whether set out in a contract explicitly or whether acquired by custom and practice, may be considered to be part of your ‘normal contractual expectation’, i.e. the hours of work you expect your employer to honour. All contracts of employment are by definition time-bound, and a request by a manager can be turned down. In addition to contract law, the Human Rights Act enshrines the ‘right to a family life’ which reinforces this basic principle. If you are open to agreeing a change, therefore the first step is to ensure that this is consulted over properly, and you can get advice before finally agreeing.
  
• We would advise that agreements are explicitly stated as temporary. We should advise members to insist that it is agreed up-front that agreement is not a permanent change in contract. This is probably where you will need to be most careful. The best way to do this is to set out in an email that the agreement is limited to a particular period (a term or academic session). This is sensible for both parties as it leaves both management and staff clear as to what has been agreed and no-one should feel taken for granted.
  
• Workload management obligations remain. Finally, leaving aside as to when work is carried out by agreement, there are obligations regarding regulating total workloads to ensure that they do not exceed the contractual FTE. When working patterns change it is often the case that managers fail to support staff in managing their workload, and staff actually end up working longer periods of time. So there should be an agreement to monitor total working hours as a result of any change of hours.

Equality and H&S rights

 There are additional Equality Act and Health and Safety implications of changes in working hours. 

• There are legal grounds for prioritising some staff’s needs over others. The two groups of staff who should be prioritised by law are
  a) staff responsible for the care of others, and
  b) staff with long term conditions (disabilities). 
  
• Otherwise all staff in the same position should be treated equally and staff should not be discriminated against in being put under pressure to change working hours.
  
• There are also some related consequential issues which are technically not covered by Health and Safety At Work – such as travel times and Covid exposure risk on public transport – but which are protected by the overall contractual position.