Hi there
I wondered if someone could help me come to terms with something that happened to me while I was on maternity leave in 2010.
My maternity leave started on 1 April 2010, and would have ended on 31 March 2011, the same day that my fixed term contract was due to come to an end.
6 weeks after my baby was born, I was asked to come into the office, and my manager told me that due to widespread cuts within my organisation, my contract was not likely to be renewed. She said that as I had been at the organisation over a year, I would have re-deployment status, ie that I would be able to apply for jobs internally, with priority over candidates who did not have re-deployment status.
However, she then said 'but as you will be competing with so many other people in your position, it is unlikely that you will find another job here'.
In my postnatal haze I went away, panicked, found myself a new job and resigned.
I am still bothered by this, not least since my new employer announced it is moving to London in two years, and I am now looking for more work - and my target employer is my former employer, whose vacancies are now mostly internal ones.
I have since found the below on fixed term contracts during maternity:
"If the non-renewal of the contract is due to a redundancy situation, the employer should remember that the employee is 'entitled to be offered' any suitable alternative employment (Maternity and Parental Leave etc Regulations 1999, regulation 10(2)). This places the employee in a preferential position to others facing the same redundancy situation."
No mention was made of preferential treatment for my maternity at the time. I understand from another thread today that I should have simply been offered a suitable vacancy elsewhere in the organisation - but maybe that wouldn't apply here?
Was I treated unfairly? I know there is nothing I can do about it now but need to know for my sanity. When I tried asking for HR advice at the time, I was told to go to the manager who had said I'd be unlikely to find another job, so they were basically useless. I think I just gave up really. I just feel really annoyed about it still, and want to put it to bed.
I should say that my former employer was a large public sector organisation, and that there were many job cuts happening at the time. Part of me felt other people were more entitled to the jobs than I was, as I had not been there that long, so I admit I gave up quite easily.