Redundancy - does this sound right to you?

[queribus]

My partner works for a company which is currently looking for volunteers for redundancy (probably before compulsory redundancies). All employees have been given a document explaining the procedure - it includes the following:
"Pregnany employees are in a special category and should only be selected for redundancy if there is really no alternative. They will be considered in priority for any suitable alternative."

Does this sound right? Any advice welcome.

[mankyscotslass]

Sounds about right, when I was pregnant and in a redundancy situation they had to be very careful about offering anything suitable to me first.

[Freckle]

The law relating to priority for alternative suitable employment actually applies to employees on maternity leave. However, to avoid any accusations of discrimination, most sensible employers would offer it to pregnant employees too.

[prettybird]

Search on flowerbeanbag, redundancy and maternity leave - she's posted on this before.

If you are on maternity leave when there are rednundancies, then yuo need to be palced into a suitable alternative position, ie you don't have to compete for it.

It goes against all the usual ideas of equality etc (although I suppose you could argue that you can't expect someone to interview if they have literally just had their baby - hence the blanket rule), so according to flowery, even most HR departments don't know this.

Don't think that the same applies if you are just pregnant when the redundnacies get announced.

[flowerybeanbag]

Pregnant employees get no specific legal protection until they are on maternity leave, so this is not a legal requirement, it's the employer being sensible and protecting themselves.

But there's nothing stopping a pregnant employee volunteering if she wishes. Although an employer might want to avoid giving pregnant employees even voluntary redundancy - depending on the dates, a pregnant employee being made redundant might still have to be paid SMP anyway, and by the time she gets back from maternity leave, all sorts of things might have changed.

[mankyscotslass]

Sorry, that's what I meant, I was on ML, but still pregnant....and I took the money and ran!

[queribus]

Thank you so much for your replies. Had no previous experience of redundancy, so all this is new.

I can understand the maternity leave situation (although no mention is made of this in the document), but it seemed to me that making decisions about who stays or goes on the basis of pregnancy alone is potentially discriminatory.

It's very helpful to have advice from those who know, though ...

Thanks again!

[flowerybeanbag]

queribus are you thinking that giving pregnant women priority is discriminatory against other groups?

[queribus]

Not meaning to be inflammatory, but, yes, it did seem to me that this amounts to 'positive discrimination'. I would have thought that selection for redundancy would be via a set of clearly defined criteria which apply to everyone.

I do understand the point about the law being different when you are on maternity leave and this seems to be perfectly reasonable.

Thanks for the help.

[flowerybeanbag]

Well yes you are right. When pregnant, as opposed to being on maternity leave, employees should be selected against criteria along with other staff.

It's a bit foolish of the employer to state outright that pregnant women will be given priority, as it risks putting other employees' backs up, although in practice it's not such a horrendously bad thing for them to do. There's no denying pregnant women would be at a disadvantage in the marketplace for new jobs, and they would get additional protection anyway if they happen to have started their maternity leave by that point.

It would have to be dealt with individually, if someone was made redundant at the expense of a pregnant woman and felt that they met the necessary criteria better, they could challenge it as unfair selection.

Could be that the employer has a number of pregnant women and some/all of them could be technically on maternity leave when the redundancies happen so are preparing along those lines?