Reducing part time workers’s number of working days.

Hello

We currently have 2 part time staffs and out shop is open 5 days a week.
1 person works 1 day a week
The second one works 3 days a week but is also posing us quite a few problems. We keep teacing her the same things.
I would like to reduce her number of days on the planning for the coming months. According to that part time person, doing so is illegal.

As she is japanese and annoying, and i can see her go contact all the authorities she can to try to push us into troubles, and i am trying to get PR too, i would like to avoid beeing in an impass.

I assume it is possible to reduce it legally, just starting from march for exemple.

Anybody has informations on the law about reducing the number of days for part timers?

Thanks.

As an aside, even though it is a simple job, they do get paid lunch breaks and higher than the industry standard salary, because we wanted to be nice, but seems like it backfired.

3 comments
  1. ~~I believe part-time workers have much lower protections and thus you should be able to cut their hours,~~ especially if you have been documenting her performance issues AND giving her feedback and improvement plans. I’m not sure on this so hopefully someone else chimes in.
    *Edited above part since I’m apparently off base on the less protections bit. I’ll keep the documentation and feedback advice up since that part should be sound advice regardless.*

    > As an aside, even though it is a simple job, they do get paid lunch breaks and higher than the industry standard salary, because we wanted to be nice, but seems like it backfired.

    As an aside to your aside, **NO**. Paying a fair wage and giving breaks and such doesn’t backfire. Do you think she’d be doing better if you paid her less and didn’t give paid lunch breaks?

  2. As a general rule, it is not permitted for a company to shorten working hours for part-time workers if the hours have been stated in their employment contracts. If the working hours are reduced due to unavoidable circumstances, the employer must pay 60% of the average wage as leave allowance.

    This is why it is always advisable to include a provision in part time contracts that working hours may vary depending on the needs of the employer.

  3. My Japanese husband has his own business so I asked him about this situation. He said that if you have an employment contract with the worker then the terms of the contract regarding termination would apply. If there is no contract and you fire them they can go to the labor office and make a complaint, in which case there will be an investigation. The labor office will then make a determination as to the legality of the firing after hearing both sides and interviewing others who work there. If that worker is problematic you should be documenting the problems.

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