8. Lay-off and Short Time Working

Why are these Clauses so Important?  Short time working and lay off allow a business to reduce the amount of work they offer employees (and reduce payment on a pro rata basis), or to lay off employee's completely (i.e. offer no work and no normal pay).  The company must however have a contractual right to do this or gain agreement (see below).Where a business suffers a significant downturn in work, short time working or lay-off allows the business to quickly react and reduce their costs to allow them time to recover (i.e. to reduce the salary bill).  This can prevent the need to make redundancies.   Examples of when this may happen include COVID-19 and previous to this there was the credit/bank crisis, foot and mouth disease and others. It may also be a something…