Public sector redundancy processes - role of unions in raising equality impact concerns. What's your experience?

[PublicSectorHag]

Hi all,

I have recently been through a redundancy process in public sector organisation. This process disproportionately impacted middle aged women (and left younger, male colleagues largely untouched), but in none of the meetings did either HR or the union mention an equality impact assessment and any actions that would be taken as a result of any findings.

Whilst I was actually relieved to take redundancy as I'd grown disillusioned with my organisation, I have since found myself reflecting on how disappointing the union's (Unison's) approach was. In a context where I think a lot of redundancies disproportionately affect middle aged women, often from global majority/black asian and ethnic minority communities, it's pretty shocking if unions are failing to play a role seeking to mitigate the impact.

Can I please ask others who have been through similar process what their experiences were? Was there an equality impact assessment and how was it used (if at all)? What role did unions play in flagging and challenging any equality impacts, if any?

Most unions despise middle aged women, so I wouldn’t expect any different.

At the risk of being flamed, is such a thing needed, isn't the point of redundancy to cut down on jobs that are not needed to save money. Don't you need to make sure the balance at the end is of the jobs required, so you have money well spent, not the people who are doing the jobs, especially in the public sector.

If only this was true, rather than the reality that seems to happen, and not just in the public sector, is that somehow whoever does the analysis somehow finds the majority of jobs that could be cut just happen to be the ones middle aged women are doing.

And of course implying that young men (with less experienced) are doing essential work!

Wouldn't it be great if unions were for instance collecting statistics on redundancies reflecting, sex, race and disability to show that employers are or aren't not being discriminatory.

I went through a equal pay process, in which the union were downright obstructive followed by redundancy due to reorganisation where they gave me zero support - I had been a member over 20 years. I have never and will never join a union again. They have proved that they don't give a shit about women.

Unison didn't even turn up to a pre-arranged redeployment meeting my DH asked them to attend with him. Shop Steward promised to come then went radio silent.

Only time he's ever asked them for help after paying subs for 25 years and they let him down.

UCU is pretty useless when it comes to supporting colleagues whom management are trying to make redundant. They're OK when it comes to political posturing over gender identity politics and Gaza etc. but anything that involves actual work is a bit more challenging for them. In fairness, I think my lot are equal opportunity useless. I'm not seeing them being more effective defending male colleagues' jobs either.

I think a lot depends on the people who become branch officials. The University of Nottingham's redundancy programme is getting some serious pushback from their UCU leaders, who got themselves on the BBC and other media pretty quickly when the redundancy programme was announced. I wish my lot were like that.

How were you selected for redundancy?

And of course implying that young men (with less experienced) are doing essential work!

What if they are, young or not, less experienced or not, if they're doing the essential work, you don't make them redundant.

If they're making middle aged women redundant and then moving young men with less experience into their jobs that would be discrimination, and illegal.

Sounds like OP scored low on the non discriminatory redundancy scoring matrix that's based on skill and ability and has sour grapes 🍇