to think my redundancy is wrong? (Advice please)

[lollymad]

Hope putting this in AIBU to start with will catch the eye of some HR/Employment Law experts on here.

Long story short: Been with employer 7 years, excellent record, MD has always been openly pleased with my work.

Wednesday morning I went in early to get on with some work. My dept. manager came in at 9.00am and called me into his office.

I was told the department had been reviewed, they were changing it, my duties would be redeployed to other staff so my role, and me are redundant. Effective immediately.

I thought it was an informal chat. I have had nothing in writing, no warning, consultation nothing.

AIBU to wonder WTF is going on?

My understandidng is that you have to be given 5 days consultsntion where you can suggest alternative dept structures (not that these tend to make much difference).

If you do a similar role (I think, at least 40%) the same as at least one other person in the dept, then you both/all have to be put on consultation as both/all roles are potentially redundant.

Not a HR professional, so don't take this as gospel, but have been made redundant, and made people redundant and this is my experience of doing so.

Oh and do you have a suspicion that anything else is going on? That they wanted to get rid of you for any particular reason rather than anybody else, so there is discrimination or extra reason for unfair dismissal? Has somebody else there got a vendetta against you?

And on a separate note, have you managed to get all your belongings and important documents and contacts personal stuff off your PC OK? Do you know if you will be able to go back in again or if there is anybody there that will sort stuff out for you if needs be?

^ there is nothing in law like that which would apply here.

There are consultation obligations if a company is considering making 20+ redundancies I think it is.

Not sure about that zipzap, we went for legal advice on how to handle our redundancies correctly so that we could not be taken to court, we paid our legal advisors specifically so that we would not be liable for any potential contest by an employee we had to make redundant. Shame we had to do that really, it equated to two months wages which we would much rather have paid to our staff.

Not sure the point you are making floweryblue? Sorry I might be being daft!!!!

BooBear, none of our staff earn over £400 per week, so maybe that's why we were looking at averages.

Yes that might be why. Also the rate only went up to £400 on 1st Feb this year. It was £380 before that and £360 before that I think.

It might also have been because you staff earnt a fluctuating wage.

this happened to me OP and I took them for what I could. Threatened them with UD and claimed 12 months pay plus perks. We settled at 6 moths which was about £30k.

They made a huge fuck up by not following procedure and they paid for it. Hooray!

BTW being made redundant is totally shit esp when it happens out of the blue like that. Keep your chin up and fleece them for every penny!

Again thank you all - so much useful information.

Zipzap - I grabbed most of my stuff on Wednesday I think. There may be a couple of bits and pieces but yes, there is someone I trust to get these for me.
My PC has very little on it - think maybe a couple of letters to our old landlord at the most.

There is another member of staff whose job overlaps with mine, and mine with hers, so will question this also.

Right, will make a list of things to ask tomorrow, and get on with it.

[psychs self up]

Good luck! Feel free to PM me if you need any help (I'm a barrister specialising in employment law). Nothing like a bit of fee MN legal advice

*free!!!! Freudian slip there!!!

Thanks Boo!

fee legal advice Boo? a bit of a Freudian slip there non?

BTW I am a comm prop solicitor so no help at all I am afraid. Save of course for getting a fair deal out of the Bastard Law Firm who made me redundant

Can't give you any legal advice I'm afraid, but CAB have some useful info on redundancy as a starting point.
You could always drop in and see them for more detailed advice.

snap!

I think my point is that, as we have seen on this thread, it is difficult to lose a member of staff. I would rather have kept the staff we had to stop employing for a further two months than to pay a solicitor for advice to guide us through the redundancy nightmare. In our situation, we are a very small firm, the people involved could see for themselves what was happening and more than one of our employees had to endure the threat of redundancy, in the interests of fairness, when we all already had an idea of who would willingly take it.

Sorry if I'm not being clear, red grape juice has been consumed!

Hi boo from memory there are two types of consultation period, 5 days if less than 20 people, longer, and you need to inform a gov agency if more than 20 people. Have done both before, but I work for a reasonably large company (800 people), so we have to do things by the book - might not be the same for all companies.

You won't go wrong with following BooBearBoo's advice OP. Everything she says is 100% spot on correct (I'm a solicitor who lectures, inter alia, in employment law).

Sounds like you are going to have to ask for a meeting with your employers (with a representative of your choosing there alongside you). If no joy, strongly worded letter. If still no joy, solicitor and claim for unfair dismissal. Their actions have turned this into a potentially unfair dismissal situation rather than a redundancy (unless they can provide very clear proof of the selection process and even then they have missed out the correct procedural steps).

I am surprised employers behave like this. Its not as if the consequences of getting this wrong are not frequently publicised.

Boo you are a star ( hands over mn star of the day award)

it always makes me cuckle the legally we are entilted to work our notice.

Sadly redundancy is not about performance BUT as others have said they have to do consultation process before they tell you - 30 days for less than I think 30 employees. But I was made redundant a couple of years ago and they didn't bother ie they started the consultation process on the same day as they told us, we took them to an employment tribunal and got an extra 4 weeks pay so not really much consolation.

LoveBeing - why thank you!

Hi I work in HR and have unfortunately made a lot of people redundant in last few years and can confirm that for individual redundancies there is no minimum period of consultation required in law. They should still haveconsulted with u meaningfully though confirmed your redundancy in writing and offered u right to appeal also it is statutory notice they should pay u I.e 7 weeks or 1 weeks pay for every year of service up to 12 Years. Have they confirmed any of this in writing including ur schedule of payments?

Ultimately they can decide the role u perform is no longer required but if they fail to follow a fair process it could make the dismissal unfair so write a letter of appeal to them in the first instance u will have 3 months to make a tribunal claim from date of dismissal so u have plenty of time to decide on next moves.

Three months less one day I think < pedant >.

figgygal is right - there is NO MINIMUM consultation period UNLESS the co is making 20+ redundancies. A lot of people seem to be posting on here saying there is but there is not.

Yes it's 3m less one day to file an ET claim.