Are Employers Obliged to let you Return to Work Early from Unpaid Leave? I have been an employee at the company for over 5-year and I had requested time off work (4-months) to do sabbatical with some travelling. It was granted by my line manager. The request was made in person and then finalised in email. However, fast-forward to now and due to the coronavirus pandemic, I have had to return home early from my travels, at great financial cost. As such, I am keen to start working again as soon as possible and can do so from home with ease. FYI, before leaving I was working from home once a week anyway! I having had a call with my line manager, he says it won't be possible to return before the original return date, almost 2-months away. I am certain that in any normal situation (e.g. sans corona) they would be pleased to have me back early. After all, there was a reluctance to let me go in the first place. When I pressed him on why, I was told my pay wasn't in the budget for April and due to corona they were already down in their P&amp;L. However, the UK government is willing to reimburse companies pay 80% of people's wages if the coronavirus has stopped them from working, so this seems a weak reason. Either way, this leaves me in a very strange situation: I am employee but I am not being payed. Therefore my questions are as such: Can my company legally stop me from returning to work, if it is not from something such as illness, etc? Alternatively, there is a mechanism in place that can allow me to return to work earlier? If I am not allowed to return to work, what does this mean for my employment status? If I was unemployed I could claim certain benefits, however, I would consider myself employed so I feel rather in limbo right now! Any advice on this would be REALLY appreciated. TL;DR I requested 4-months leave I have asked to start again 2-months early I am being denied that Do I have a right to start again early?/Are they obligated to allow me to return early? Outcome It seems that I am in a rather strange, but probably not entirely unique position, so I will detail some findings for those that might find them useful. My employment status remains "Employed", as suggested in the answers. However, I wrongly assumed this excludes me from claiming Universal Credits. As I am not current earning I can still apply (in fact you can apply if you are earning, that just take this into accounts and give you less). Hopefully this is useful to someone else in my position.
No, they are not obliged to take you back early As you say in your TL;DR you arranged 4 months leave and your employer no doubt made arrangements to deal with your absence. Now, you want to return early; they are not obliged to allow you to do so just as you would not be obliged to do so if they wanted you to cut your leave short. No doubt the current pandemic has changed the situation and in its absence, they might have been more willing to have you back early. But then, you wouldn't want to be coming back early. Your employment status is that you are employed and on leave. Subject to the details of your employment contract; there is nothing stopping you taking another job - there is a huge demand for logistics workers particularly in the health sector at the moment; much of it unskilled work. dIf you want to be unemployed, you can always resign.
Overtime pay in Ontario is required by the Employment Standards Act (ESA). Most employees are entitled to &quot;time and a half&quot; if they work more than 44 hours in a single week. According to this Ontario Government web page For most employees, whether they work full-time, part-time, are students, temporary help agency assignment employees, or casual workers, overtime begins after they have worked 44 hours in a work week. Their hours after 44 must be paid at the overtime pay rate. Managers and supervisors do not qualify for overtime if the work they do is managerial or supervisory. Even if they perform other kinds of tasks that are not managerial or supervisory, they are not entitled to get overtime pay if these tasks are performed only on an irregular or exceptional basis. ... A fixed salary compensates an employee for all non-overtime hours up to and including 44 hours a week. After 44 hours, the employee is entitled to overtime pay. ... An employer and an employee cannot agree that the employee will give up their right to overtime pay under the ESA. Agreements such as these are not allowed and would be deemed void. However, an employee can make an agreement to take paid time off in lieu of overtime pay or to average hours of work for overtime pay purposes. An employer cannot lower an employee’s regular wage to avoid paying time and a half after 44 hours (or another overtime threshold that applies) in a work week. For example, if Josée’s regular pay is $17.00 an hour, her employer cannot drop her regular rate in a week when overtime was worked to $15.00 an hour and then pay her $22.50 (1½ × $15.00) for overtime hours worked instead of $25.50 (1 ½ × $17.00). There are various industries that are subject to special rules that modify the usual rules for overtime. There are particular kinds of jobs that are exempt from the ESA. These are listed on this page. Conclusion The situation described in the question sounds like a violation of the ESA. But it might come under an Averaging Agreement, which is permitted. Under such an agreement weeks with longer hours are averaged with weeks that have shorter hours. There are rules governing such agreements. Note that the hours listed in the question amount to 35 hours per week. An additional nine hours could be worked in any given week before getting to the 44 hours of work which usually triggers overtime pay. The linked pages include official contact information for ESA information and enforcement.
You have mentioned that he has agreed to pay you to move out - in this case, he may wish you to sign a contract where you (both) agree that, in exchange for this sum of money you release and discharge each other from any obligations under the previous contract from a certain date onwards, and that from that date you both waive any right of claim, action or any other such proceedings that may be brought to exercise your rights to specific performance or damages as regards to this specific conduct in relation to the lease. This would likely protect both of you from adverse proceedings from each other, but only for this early discharge of the contract, but not in relation to other breaches of contract as might occur in the interim.
I am not a lawyer: If they sue you it will probably be for fraud, then the DA will investigate and can easily find out who you are. If they can prove that you signed the contract is another story. If the clause in the contract is valid yet another. Getting a lawyer might be wise, especially if your visa depends on a clean legal record. Have you talked to them yet? If you can afford it, you or your new company could pay off he months salary to the old company. In my opinion it's fair, they probably turned down a lot of other applicants an will either need to search again or find a good temp to replace you. Think there was something that you cannot quit a contract before it starts, but another option would be to start working for them and then realizing during the test period that it's a bad match. However, best lawyer up! Search for "Kündigung vor Beschäftigungsbeginn" (Cancellation before the start of employment) Quick google suggests that they might be right if they have it in the contract, but the lawyer will know for sure. Look for someone who does "Arbeitsrecht".
As I understand it, the legal distinction here is: Whose choice was it that you not continue in your job? If the company was prepared to offer you an extension, until you told them that you were not interested, you are leaving of your own free will, and would not be entitled to redundancy rights. If your employer did not extend the contract when you would have been willing to continue, that is either a redundancy, or a dismissal of another kind. If you were dismissed for valid cause, you have no redundancy rights. if you were let go because of a lack of work, or because the employer decided not to have anyone doing that job, that I gather would be redundancy.
Since this is a board about law, the legal answer is that New Jersey does not regulate vacation pay: In New Jersey, employers are not required to provide employees with vacation benefits, either paid or unpaid. If an employer chooses to provide these benefits, it is only required to comply with its established policy or employment contract. The specific law cited by that web page is this one, which says that &quot;Nothing in this chapter requires an employer to pay an employee for hours the employee is not required to be at his or her place of work because of holidays, vacation, lunch hours, illness and similar reasons.&quot; So whether your boss can count weekend days as part of your vacation will depend on your employment contract and the established policies of your employer. Unfortunately, that's not something this forum can provide advice on.
I have the same line in a contract that was just sent to me. So I did some quick research into this. However, I AM NEW TO THE SYSTEM AND DO NOT KNOW IT WELL!!, so please do not act on this information without seeking further advice from the relevant professionals. From what I can gather, the "Arbeitszeitgesetz (ArbZG)" is the law that governs working hours in Germany. Here is a link: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/arbzg/gesamt.pdf I used Google Translate to translate this information and found that in §3 it states that "The default daily working time must not exceed eight hours. It can only be extended up to ten hours if within six calendar months or 24 weeks an average of eight hours working day is not exceeded." This would lead me to believe that even if overtime is not paid as extra on top of your salary, they must give you the time off at another time to keep the average working day to 8 hours. **However, as the working week is Monday - Sat, the average working hours per week may be calculated as 48 hours per week, and not 40! Once again, I am not fully sure of my information, so use at your own risk!!
Don’t be a dick Tell your earlier employer that you can no longer take the position rather than have them waste time and resources on you. You can try to negotiate a waiver of the break cost, most people will agree. If they want to hold you to the letter of your contract then you’ll know you were lucky not to work there; pay them what you owe them and move on.