The question:

I have just started work for a small construction/professional cleaning company. We provide construction and cleaning staff to the airports. As you might guess, work is very slow and on some days, we may not have any work for the staff.

My question is, how much notice do we have to give that we don’t have any work? The staff work in shifts, so we may not know until an hour or even less before the shift starts, that we don’t have work for them. Do we, in that case, have to pay them for a day’s work even though they’ve done none? We have a clause in our contracts about lay-offs, which says that the company reserves the right to temporarily lay-off staff without pay or to reduce normal working hours and/or days. The contract was supposedly drawn up by a professional so I assume it’s OK but can you confirm this?

Legal advice:

 
Martin Brewer, partner, Mills & Reeve
 

This is indeed a purely contractual question.  You need to look at what the contract says about notice (or any policy/practice).  If the contract is silent and there’s nothing else to go on what you need to know is that strictly contractually speaking you can give whatever notice you want.  However, one important caveat is that in implementing a contractual term you cannot act in a way which in effect makes it very difficult or impossible for the employee to comply with the contract.  So for example there’s no point in giving 5 minutes notice if an employee is going to take 30 minutes to arrive.  To do so would be a breach of trust and confidence.

Martin Brewer can be contacted at martin.brewer@mills-reeve.com. For further information, please visit Mills & Reeve.

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Esther Smith, partner, Thomas Eggar