Am I facing restructure due to working part time?

I hope that you are enjoying your maternity leave outside of these issues with your employer. To answer your points, I have firstly summarised my understanding of your situation from your question:

• Your job before you started maternity leave was as a Senior Account Manager working 3 days per week and your role was part of a team.
• You have taken 22 weeks of maternity leave so far. Your right to return to the same job varies slightly depending on whether you are planning to return after 26 weeks leave or after up to 52 weeks leave, which I have explained further below.
• You do not say how long you have worked for your employer, but I assume this is over two years (and this can have an impact on the possible claims).
• Your employer has announced that they are restructuring and that staff numbers will be reduced.
• You have been told that you cannot return part time, but that you will be offered an available role. You do not yet know the details of this and they have asked you to attend an interview to discuss.

Returning to work
Firstly, in terms of your right to return to work at the end of your maternity leave, if you return after 26 weeks ordinary leave, you have the right to return to the same job on the same terms and conditions. If additional leave is taken, then you still have the right to return to the same job, unless it is not reasonably practicable. In that case, the employer has a duty to offer you a suitable alternative position.

Redundancy
If a redundancy situation arises while an employee is on maternity leave, then the employee on maternity leave should be offered a suitable alternative vacancy and also should be given priority for available roles over other employees at risk of redundancy. Often employees would prefer to deal with the consultation on their return to work. However, the employer generally shouldn’t wait until then as it is more likely that any vacancies would have been filled.

It is not immediately clear from your summary whether there is a genuine redundancy situation in the first place. This is defined by law and the most likely scenario is that the employer has a downturn in work which requires fewer employees to carry out that particular type of work. However, there would not be a redundancy situation if they wanted to replace part-time employees with full-time employees as the volume of work would have increased. There are conflicting arguments about whether “part-time” and “full-time” are in themselves particular types of work, but this is a difficult position for the employer to take.

In terms of attending an interview, if a suitable vacancy exists, then this should be offered to you without the need for you to attend a competitive interview. However, on a practical level, it may be in your interest to find out as much as possible about the role before you are due to return.

If no suitable role is available, then you would be entitled to a statutory redundancy payment (if you have over two years’ service) and your notice pay. If you qualified for SMP, this would still be paid until the 39 weeks is up.

Grievance
You highlight a number of concerns about your treatment, and you do have protection under employment law. Firstly, you should not be treated less favourably because of your part-time status and secondly, you should not be discriminated against as a result of taking maternity leave.

With regard to the issues that you have identified, I would suggest looking up your company’s grievance procedure which should summarise how an employee can raise concerns about their treatment. Usually the first stage of this is to put your concerns in writing to enable the employer to investigate them. Your concerns seem to cover these areas:

• Various comments about being a part-time worker, both at work and at work social events;
• Being required to interview previously, when other colleagues were not;
• The timing of the current meetings.

I would also highlight that, while this is undoubtedly very stressful, recognising that redundancy situations are often very difficult for employers as well can help and while you have rights you can assert, working with your employer to achieve a solution that works for both of you can be more valuable.

Finally, there are a number of short time limits that would apply to taking any of these rights further and other options that depend on your objectives. I would therefore recommend that you take further legal advice on your situation.

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• Part time jobs Restructure