Con varying

The contract of employment is binding on both parties. This means that it is unlawful for one party to vary the terms and conditions in the contract without the agreement of the other. The contract itself may, however, include provisions allowing the employer to make important changes - for example, requiring the employee to move to a different place of work or to undertake a different type of work. In the case of a change covered by a provision of this kind, there is no variation of the terms and conditions in the contract and the change will be lawful.

It is always open to either party to seek to renegotiate the terms and conditions with the other. A variation may be made by agreement between the employer and the employee. It may alternatively result from a variation by collective agreement, where the contract itself (either expressly or by implication, such as through long standing custom and practice) provides for this. A collective agreement is one made between, on the one hand, an employer or an association representing employers and, on the other, a trade union representing employees.

The contract may provide for its terms to be varied by a particular collective agreement even if the employee is not a member of a trade union (so that, for example, collectively negotiated pay agreements can be incorporated into all employees' contracts). An employee's written statement of employment particulars must specify any collective agreements that directly affect his or her terms and conditions (including, where the employer is not a party, the identities of the parties).

If a variation of contract affects one or more of the terms and conditions required by law to be covered in the employee's written statement of employment particulars, then the employee must be given written notification of this. The notification must be given as soon as possible, and at any rate no later than one month after the variation is made. (Again, further details can be found in

It should be noted that if an employee finds a variation of contract unsatisfactory but nevertheless continues to work under the new terms and conditions without making his or her objections known to the employer, he or she could after a time be deemed to have implicitly accepted it and it would then become incorporated into the contract.

Refusal by employee to authorise variation

If the employer wishes to vary the terms and conditions of employment and the employee, having been consulted, objects to the variation, then the employer may decide to terminate the contract by dismissing the employee.

As usual in the event of dismissal, the appropriate statutory or contractual notice (or pay in lieu of notice) would have to be given and any other contractual obligations relating to the termination of employment would have to be fulfilled. The employer would then be free to offer the job on different terms and conditions either to the dismissed employee or to another applicant.

If the dismissed employee considered the employer's actions to have been unfair, he or she would be entitled to make a complaint of unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal - provided that he or she had completed a qualifying period of at least one years' continuous service.

Such complaints must normally be made within three months of the date the employment ended. The tribunal would consider all the circumstances of the case in deciding whether or not the dismissal was in fact unfair. These would include the employer's reasons for wishing to vary the terms and conditions - overriding business considerations, for example, might make the dismissal fair - and the employee's reasons for opposing the variation. (Further information can be found in the ACAS and DTI sites with links opposite).

If an employer attempts simply to impose a variation of contract on an employee without the employee's agreement, this will be a breach of contract. The employee may have various means of redress available in law. These are described in the following sections of this document.