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I believe s.98(1)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 [1] allows dismissal for "some other substantial reason" which could be argued to cover this scenario and there is some case law such as Garside and Laycock Ltd v Booth [2]

[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/section/98 [2] https://www.bto.co.uk/blog/refusing-to-accept-a-wage-cut-%E2...




Thanks for the interesting source material.

It appears that the case in question has not yet been definitively resolved, though, and the argument made would contradict almost everything many employment lawyers have been advising for a long time about the implications of the ERA in this area. Notably, that includes a lot of advice given during the previous financial crisis just over a decade ago, when similar questions were widespread.

The conventional legal wisdom seems to have been that mandating a pay cut is not allowed, because it's not a permitted deduction from wages and it's likely a breach of contract, and that firing someone just for refusing is not allowed either, because any decisions about who to let go if the business is in financial trouble are a separate matter that should be made objectively. That would mean without reference to the refusal by any given employee to accept worse terms of employment, and without conflating a position that might now be redundant with any employee currently holding that position who might also be able to work elsewhere in the business instead.




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