I have recently found out that 30 of my current employees do not have contracts of employment and now plan to rectify this by issuing them.

I know that there will be areas of disagreement on the terms and conditions, though, and wondered where I stood on this. For example, the rest of the organisation are on contracts which state a particular rate of overtime; however during last summer, at a time of high productivity, the overtime rate was increased. My belief was that this was a result of desperate times, and was not contractual.

I do know that if I try to issue contracts now to those existing employees without contracts then they will almost certainly refuse to sign them unless the clause for overtime is at the higher rate. I am extremely reluctant to do this as it creates a two tier effect in the organisation.

Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this, or where I stand legally?
Lesley Keenan