TLDR because this post is pretty long:
My new manager is trying to make me redundant because he doesn't believe my availability “suits the store” despite it being completely okay under the old manager, and with me meeting my minimum contacted hours, I need help to try and keep my job as I cannot afford to lose it.
Heya everyone! Just for a little context before I begin, I recently got a job (Customer Team Leader) at a UK Co-op food store (doing shifts for 5 weeks), the manager that originally hired me has now transitioned stores and a new store manager is now working at ours. I will be starting University later this month.
When I was being interviewed for the job, it was agreed upon that I had to work a minimum of 16 hours a week to fulfil my contract, however I also stated I can only work 16-20 hours a week due to the fact I will be studying at University, I would be free to work at any time on weekends and anytime after 6pm on weekdays (likely a 6pm-10pm shift) with a slight preference for Friday evenings if possible. My previous manager was completely okay with this and I was hired under these conditions, I would be more than capable of meeting my 16 hours a week minimum required by contract.
Now my new manager, to put it bluntly, is being an arse about it. After 5 weeks of 16-20 hours, the new manager had suddenly set me 27 hours, which is way higher than I had agreed to, this was also the week I start University. I decided to contact him immediately as he had said that as it was his first scheduling of our store there may be some issues. I explained my availability to him (both in person when we first met and now re-stating it due to the complications) and he responded with “Hi ___, we are going to have to pick this conversation up when ur next in as I was not made aware of your availability issues”. First of all, he was aware of the issues but I could understand if perhaps he had forgotten about it, however, calling it an “availability issue” concerned me as it was a very passive aggressive way of telling me it's my problem and I need to solve it. Secondly, deflecting the conversation to in-person rather than on a recorded message when I have strong feelings he doesn't want me working there (more below) set of some alarms.
Now, I haven't mentioned it yet but the few times I have seen him in the store, he has been extremely clear that he does not believe I am trained enough yet, I only started recently and we've had very few staff due to illness and surgeries, and days have been busy, so I've only picked up a handful of jobs, however his tone is extremely disrespectful and outright rude. I have been working extremely hard and have gotten on with all my colleagues very well who have been very helpful when teaching me new tasks when they have had time to.
This was further worsened when I realised he hadn't even given me 6pm weekday shifts, he had set the start time for my shifts to 4pm (I had misread it as 6pm as sometimes I read 16:00 as 6pm rather than 4pm). Bear in mind I won't even be home by 4pm let alone ready to go to work, I contacted him as soon as I noticed this, same day as the previous issue, and he responded with “No worries, we can pick up a conversation around this as I need to see if your availability suits the store”. First, again with the passive aggressive tone. Secondly, I've realised that with all our interactions via messaging he constantly tries to deflect any conversation to in-person, while I do prefer in-person I honestly believe he's trying to get as little information in-writing as possible just in case he does decide to dismiss me.
I desperately need to keep a hold of this job, I left my old one after a year of searching when I joined here and to be fires immediately because some twat decided he didn't like the conditions I agreed to when starting the job would be horrible. I can't deal with searching for another local job that can actually support my needs while I'm at university. There's hardly any low skilled jobs in my area currently, and I'm only 18 years old so I'm not able to get a more professional job yet. It's causing me a lot of stress and worry over whether leaving my old job for this one was a good idea, this new job is better in every single way and losing it to something as stupid as this would be awful.
I'm going in tomorrow at 6am and should see him at 2pm when he starts and will bring it up with him then, I really need advice on what to do in this situation. Is he legally able to fire me? Should I start looking for a new job in preparation of him letting me off? Is there any precautions I should take or laws I should know to stop him from firing me?
I just really need some advice on how to proceed with this as I am not very familiar with my worker rights and so I don't know how I can defend my situation. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, thank you for reading everyone who made it here.