In Australia, can an employer reduce the hours, and consequently the weekly wage, of an employee on salary?

Question

If you are hired full time on the basis of $X,000/year salary (ie not an hourly rate), can your boss reduce your hours each week and pay you less than the amount of salary you agreed on? it would seem to me that is illegal, if you were hired on a full time salary basis, they have to pay you that salary right?

for the sake of easy maths, lets say i agreed to work full time for $26,000 a year. And i have been getting $500 /wk for the last 6 months and doing 40 hours a week. 

Is it legal for the boss to now descide that from now on i will only work 36 (10% less) hours a week and get paid $450 a week (10% less), which is an annual income of $23,400 - (also 10%less)

If there is no written contract, but most australians don't have written contracts, just verbal one and payslips for the last 6 months stating the salary is $26,000

please only answer of you know about the rules in australia, as these things vary very much from country to country.

Mahira · Accepted Answer

Legally they can I'm afraid.  You are best to have a written contract, try to get one with any future job as it makes any problems like this a lot more difficult to solve if you don't have one.  While both are legal a verbal contract is nearly impossible to prove whether or not a particular point of the contract existed.  On this occasion though your employer is able to do that, payslips and verbal contract or not.

Rebecca H · Answer

try safe works site, sa has one im not sure about other state, if not legal aid or that new place that the howard government set up in regards to workplace agreements. Good luck. I hope you can get some money back

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In Australia, can an employer reduce the hours, and consequently the weekly wage, of an employee on salary?

2 Answers