Your rights: Can I lose my job?

Q. My individual employment agreement (not a fixed-term contract) is up for review. What are my rights and can I lose my job when it expires? Is the company obliged to renew it and what terms and conditions can be changed? What happens if we don't agree on the changes?

A. A review simply means that the company and you are going to look at the contract and talk about possible changes. There is nothing to stop such a review taking place at any time, and any terms (other than legal minimums) can potentially be discussed and altered. Your employment agreement will not expire or need to be renewed (you have said it is not a fixed-term agreement), so you shouldn't be in any danger of losing your job.

In any review of this sort, it is important to be reasonable and communicate clearly, and expect the same in return from your employer. You have personal circumstances that need to be taken into account but, likewise, your employer has a business to run and certain requirements that need to be met.

If you are being asked to agree to terms that you are not sure about, remember too that you have the right to seek advice (for example, from a friend, lawyer or union representative), and that you must be given a reasonable time to consider any changes.

Can you be forced to make changes against your will? One of the "golden rules" of employment law is that neither party (either the employee or the employer) can make changes to an employment contract without the other's agreement, so the answer is basically no. However, in these sorts of situations, employees need to bear a couple of things in mind.

First, the law says that employees (like employers) must act in good faith. This includes being "active and constructive" in maintaining productive employment relationships, as well as being "responsive and communicative".

So, for example, if an employer asks an employee to change their contractual working hours and has good reasons for doing so, I think the law requires that employee to genuinely consider this request and to give a responsive and reasonable answer (this law is still very new, and as yet there are no cases interpreting what it means). However, this doesn't mean that an employee has to agree.

Second, an employee can win the battle but lose the war. If the employee refuses to change the agreement, the employer may be able to make the employee redundant and (in effect) hire another worker who will agree to what the employer wants.

An employer must have a justifiable commercial reason to go down this track, and must follow a fair process in doing so. Such a process would (among several other things) generally involve giving the employee a fair chance to understand the consequences of refusing to agree to the requested change. In other words, the employee shouldn't be suddenly taken by surprise and made redundant. However, in any discussions about changes to working conditions, it is sensible for employees to remember that this option could be open to the employer.