"This year there will once again be a summer furlough exercise.

The requirement will be for all agency contractors (people who book their timesheets in the online billing system) to be off site for 15 days (this does not have to be consecutive but should be complete weeks where possible) within the period 01/07/2017 to 30/09/2017."

An imposed furlough has happened before but has been for a shorter period and has been at a time when I would have had a few days off anyway. It has never been for fifteen days before.

What is the legal position here? The company could prevent me from accessing the site by invalidating my pass and in any case might not approve our timesheets and hence I would not get paid. As it happens my contract finishes on 31 July but the project is in the process of requesting an extension.

This follows a recent call from my agency who told me that they had been instructed to ask all their contractors to accept an immediate 10% cut in fee rate or be put on one months notice of contract termination. My response was that if this was imposed I would termination the contract myself at the earliest possible opportunity. I am not aware of any contractors that accepted the reduction.