Hi,
My DH has just been given his letter detailing the fact that he is to be made redundant, but we are a bit confused at how they've done it and if it's above board iyswim.
Basically, there were four people at risk of being made redundant - they were all called into their manager's office nearly two weeks ago, and were told that it would be done using a set of criteria which would include the skills they have and what they bring to the company and attendance record. There was no letter/written record of this 'meeting'.
DH was happy with the selection process, mostly because in the past they've done "last one in, first one out" and he would definitely have been the one to be made redundant straight away but also because he thought it would be fairer to all involved. Also, the last redundancy in the company was carried out using a variety of selection criteria. They were all pretty surprised at the fact there was to be a redundancy as only 3 months ago they were told by the managing director/owner of the company that there was no chance of redundancies in the near future.
Anyway, fast-forward to last Friday (6th July) and DH is called into the office and told he had been selected for redundancy - however, the manager said that they had gone with the "last one in, first one out" as they couldn't decide/had no records to make the decision, without informing the 4 at risk of redundancy that this had changed. She then proceeded to tell DH all about how "Bob has been at the company the longest, and John is a bit gobby but knows XYZ, and Alex is a lot slower than everyone else but he gets the job done" and how she couldn't possibly decide between them.
Sorry it's so long, but I just want to know whether it's ok to tell them they would be selected using a variety of criteria, and then change it without informing them of that change?
I know I'm biased as I think DH is great and is really brilliant for the company - the manager is so happy with how much he's saving the company by fixing things rather than buying new/sending them back to suppliers to fix and sorting out their ordering system and it's such a shock to hear that he has been made redundant over others who have refused to do parts of their job even when the manager has asked them to and gone 'AWOL' for 3 or 4 hours at a time, and I know I'm clutching at straws. It's just been such a shock and I really feel for DH. Sorry - I know I'm probably going to be flamed for this whole post, but it really gets me how no matter how hard you work sometimes, you'll still be crapped on . Thanks for reading if you got this far.