Is it legal to force employees to take unpaid leave?

[peachybabe]

I work for a local authority, and as part of the cuts, they are talking about making all employees take 3 days mandatory unpaid leave over Christmas. It's not a problem to go into work as far as I am concerned, and I would rather do that than lose 3 days money. By the way, Unions are already involved, but even they seem to be considering this as an option!

[squarebear]

Sounds a better cut than some councils are facing!

Why not post in Jobs for a better answer.

[peachybabe]

Yeh, I'd just noticed that I hadn't changed topics. Sorry all!!

[society]

With the current economy and all that, I think your place of employment is doing this in order to save their employees their job rather than lay them off. You should be grateful, at least you'll still have your job.

[bensmum]

One of our local authorities is doing the same, their reasoning being that they can save making people redundant if all staff take unpaid leave. I can see the point there, I'm sure that most would prefer to keep their jobs.
The authority I work for is making 1600 people redundant - at present I'm not one of them but I can see harder times ahead