Being Forced To Travel By Work

I have worked for the same company for over 6 years now. In the contract that was signed way back when, there was a paragraph which said that occassional travel may be required although with the exception of going to customers in Dublin travel has never really been part of the culture. Latley due to a change in outlook, the company now wants people to travel and work up the North, the UK and europe for 6 weeks plus at at a time. We have been told that failure to comply with these 'requests' will result in disiplinary action against us.

Most of us were quite young or just out of college when we took up this employment and would have been at a stage where travel would have been an exciting prospect. Since then life has moved on with houses, marriage,kids etc. Most people are at a stage in their lives that becuase of their circumstances they are unwilling or unable to travel but we are being forced to travel against our will.

Is this reasonable given peoples circumstances?
Just Looking For Feedback /Opinion on this.

Thanks

I suppose it could be considered a change in the terms & conditions of employment if, in spite of what the contract says, up to now work trips were less frequent and shorter. Might be worth checking with the DETE employment rights section to see what they have to say about your statutory rights in a case like this?

We have similiar clauses in our contracts at work, and despite the fact that site work is quite frequent (and an essential part of the business in my line of work) we are consulted on each proposal and I've never heard of anyone being forced into a site position (for any period of time) that they didn't accept.

Personally, as I am just out of college a short time, I have no problem with this and spend well over 90% of my time on site. Many of the staff, with young children etc. are not so willing, similiar to yourself, but have never been pressured into it or treated poorly because they declined requests to go on site (it does mean missing out on additional pay etc. so anyone who can do it usually does so the company aren't exactly stuck for site staff).

To be honest, I'm not sure what comeback you'll have seeing as it's in your contract. I only mentioned my own experience of it to suggest that even though the company can/could/may enforce this, it's quite poor of them to do it in this manner.
Do check it out with any sources you can find, such as DETE above, but if you don't have much luck I'd certainly consider it as a chance to review your position and consider if your employer is treating you as you expect to be treated.

ClubMan said:

I suppose it could be considered a change in the terms & conditions of employment if, in spite of what the contract says, up to now work trips were less frequent and shorter. Might be worth checking with the DETE employment rights section to see what they have to say about your statutory rights in a case like this?

Click to expand...

Pre-supposing that there isn't a clause in your contract which allows the company to make specific changes without your consent, I believe ClubMan to be right in saying that a significant change in T&Cs could be involved, in which case the company cannot force you to agree to it. The idea that you can be 'disciplined' for failing to comply is nonsense.

A 'contract' is not just the piece of paper that you've signed but also includes what happens in practice. Although the term 'occasional travel' in the contract is very vague, the company has chosen to define it as being the very limited amount of it you've been asked to do over a long period of time. That therefore is your contract and it cannot be changed without your agreement.

The fact that the company's new travel requirements don't suit you at this stage in your life is actually not relevant to the core issue.

Just get into the habit of making social plans. Then when your employer wants to send you somewhere tell him you can do it, but he'll have to fly you home for dinner with your ma on the 15th and then you were thinking of meeting the lads on the 18th, and your missus wants to see you on the night of the 21st, and so on . . . alternatively he can fly your ma out for a bit of shopping and dinner, you get the drift.

It is not reasonable to expect employees to do this kind of work without some significant benefit to the employee. Your employer may opt to pay a per-diem or expenses (unlikely given the way he behaves above), but if he doesn't then it is totally unreasonable to expect people to be away from home for any length of time unless it was specifically stated in the contract. The simple fact is that while your employer can probably get you to do whatever he wants during work hours, forcing you to be in a foreign city during the 16 hours when you are not working is outside your contract conditions and has a direct impact on your home and social life and that quite simply has a cost.

I used to do some work away from home and took the view that since my employer was being paid directly for my presence there (as in charging a daily rate) I was entitled to some extra benefit to compensate for the fact that I was away from home for days at a time and Mrs Zag had to juggle her work times to pick up the kids from school, etc . . . The employer agreed to do this and it worked well for all involved.

My current employer doesn't charge my work out (it is internal to the company now rather than being billable) and when I travel now there is no compensation, but they also accept that my travel plans have to be flexible as a result and my timings have to match their requirements before I go anywhere.

In most situations a day trip to London or somewhere in Europe (or maybe two days) is hard to argue against, but where it repeats or where the duration goes into a few days it is not reasonable to try to enforce it on employees.

z

I recently took voluntary redundancy as the focus of what happens in my old company changed from core product development (software) to on site customisations after our software is bought. We've no customers in Ireland, some in UK, Germany, Eastern Europe & Asia. It was gonna invlove more travel than I was willing to do (am starting a night course next week - every Tues & Thurs night plus half day every 2nd or 3rd Sat so it just wasn't gonna work). I took the voluntary redundancy as there wasn't really an option for me. The demographic of employees of the company is very much "love, marriage & babies" rather than "just out of college" as it was 6 years ago when I joined. They wanted 13 volunteers (25% of employees in Irish office) but got 30 cos it just didn't suit so many people.

We'd someone in to advise us after the redundancies were announced and he deemed it to be a significant change in our employment contracts. The company wasn't willing to re-negotiate contracts with remaining employees. We opted to send a letter to the Labour Relations Commission to have the level of disquiet noted - then if some dispute does come up in the future, they've a record of it. I've yet to hear what outcome is of that - I'm only unemployed 3 weeks at this point.



Hope it works out for you but I don't think you should roll over and take it.

sid