Valid adjustment to employment contract?

Questioner

It concerns my 18 year old son Jack and his employment contract. He started at Febo as a delivery person, about a year ago, he signed an on-call contract without fixed hours. Last March he unfortunately quit school and I told him to find a job with fixed hours. His employer Febo heard this and did not want to lose him, there was a consultation and I understood that there would be a new contract with a minimum of 32 fixed hours per week. Because we still have not seen a contract I sent the owner a message (to the great irritation of my son:) and I got the following back: 'As I have indicated before, Jack does not need a new contract. The moment I set his hours at 32 hours per week, which you can also see on his pay slip, this is binding and worth just as much as a contract that states this. The fact that he will soon be employed for a year has no influence on this. As an on-call worker, I have always paid for the holiday hours, you can also see this on his pay slip. Now that he is employed for 32 hours per week, he does receive vacation hours, 160 hours per calendar year. This means that if Jack does not work for a week, he will continue to be paid and 32 hours of his leave will be deducted.' Can you tell us if this is allowed? Does he really have the same rights in this way as with a signed new contract? Is adjusting his hours on his pay slip sufficient?

Lawyer

An employment contract does not have to be agreed in writing. Oral agreements are also valid. In addition, the law provides for a number of legal presumptions about the scope of the work (average of the past months). Without having read the employment contract, I cannot give any concrete answers about the situation, but based on the facts as I have read them now, nothing new necessarily needs to be put in writing. The (verbal) agreement and the average hours worked can be demonstrated, for example, with the pay slips and app traffic. Please feel free to contact me via my profile if you have any questions and/or require legal assistance.