Legal advice?

[concretejungle]

Looking for some advice, please.

I joined a new company about 20 months ago. Big corporate organisation, and I joined to work in a new part of the business that was being set up.

For various reasons the new part of the business is no longer being set up, and as a result I am facing redundancy. I have officially been put 'at risk' and will be served my 12 weeks notice next month.

I have asked to be "redeployed" and thankfully two jobs (same job description as my current job) have come up - one permanent, one secondment. I will get preferential treatment for these, and with my strong performance record I am confident I should get one of the jobs. (Yippeee!)

However, through this process, I have discovered that the job I am doing is on a lower payscale that I expected it to be. I think the organisation disclosed the "job band" to me at recruitment stage but not the payscale. The job band didn't mean anything and I judged the seniority of the position on the salary I was offered, and wasn't told that the salary offered was way over the ceiling of the official pay band (by circa 30%)

My company are now saying they will not continue to pay me at my current salary if I get one of the two jobs that are currently vacant, and instead would move me to a salary within the pay band.

I feel really misled and angry. I left a good job with a competitor to take this role, and while I can accept the 'redundancy' situation, I feel really aggrieved about the salary issue. I have essentially taken a demotion when I moved to this company without realising it, because I judged seniority on the salary offered to me.

This brings me to my questions:

1. Has my employer done anything (legally) wrong, by not disclosing to me that they were paying me 30% over the salary cap for my banding? (Morally wrong, yes.... but legally?)

2. Is my employer legally able to redeploy me in to the "same" job (ie same job spec, same grade, slightly different team and focus but on paper the "same job") and on a massively reduced salary? How was it ok to pay me X when they recruited me, and now only pay me X-30% for the SAME JOB?!

All advice welcome.... thank you so much.

1. No, nothing legally wrong with that at all.

2. They can offer to redeploy you in this way but, with such a big drop in salary, it unlikely to be a suitable alternative role. They cannot therefore take your refusal to take on this role as a reason to refuse redundancy pay. It is entirely your choice whether to accept the job with a reduced salary or take redundancy.

Surely redundancy pay is not relevant. The OP does not have 2 years employment history at the company.

Surely redundancy pay is not relevant. The OP does not have 2 years employment history at the company.

Depends whether it takes them more than 4 weeks from now to decide what to do with her.....

1. Legally fine. Odd that the pay information about what the scale is for each job/job type isn’t available though.

I wouldn’t class taking the job as a demotion. Presumably you were happy with the level of responsibility you had, and the job title, and other aspects of the job? No reason to think it’s a demotion I don’t think.

1. Legally fine- it sounds like you are free to refuse these jobs if you want to. Unless there is a delay in the timescale you indicated in your OP redundancy pay probably won’t be relevant anyway.

Depends whether it takes them more than 4 weeks from now to decide what to do with her.....

Statutory redundancy eligibility is 24 months, the OP has worked at the company for 20 months, so to my reckoning that’s 4 months until they could qualify for redundancy. The employer is likely to have thought about this timing when they announced the OP’s role is at risk. No company wants to have to pay redundancy if they don’t have to.

Surely redundancy pay is not relevant

Sorry, yes. I forgot about the OP's length of service.

Thank you all very much, really useful.

My company are a big corporate, and I'm fortunate that their policy is that they will pay redundancy for under 2 years service. I'm also clear that they won't force me to take the 'suitable alternatives' - they give me the option and their policy says I can take or decline any role they may offer. (phew!)

I'm still a bit surprised that they can offer me "the same role" for less money?! I mean they chose to pay me a salary of X for job Y. And now my version of job Y is no longer required, but there is another job Y (which will have the same "job code", job description etc etc) and they feel it's reasonable to ask me to do it for a salary of X-30%.

Why was it ok for pay me that when they employed me, and now not want to pay me that?

The key is they are offering. They can offer whatever you like, there’s only a potential problem if they force it.

If they were forcibly reducing your salary for the job you are currently doing that would be a breach of contract (however with less than two years’ service as long as they gave you sufficient notice and there was no discrimination involved there would be very little you could do about it).

But they are not doing that. You are free to decline their offer.

As to why they are doing it, there could be several reasons. It could be that whoever authorised a starting salary of 30% over the top of the band was way out of line and this is against company policy. It could be that this redundancy situation is linked to a need to reduce costs, so why would they pay more than they have to. It could be that there are several potential candidates so again why would they pay 30% more to you if they could pay the standard salary to someone else.

The thing is they aren’t forcing you to do anything, it’s your decision. If you do not wish to do the job on the pay scalle offered, you are free to accept redundancy, I assume by mutual agreement. They will have other candidates who they can offer the job to.

They will be able to argue, successfully, that there are others in the department the new role is in on your offered pay scale and as such they cannot justify taking uou into that department on a higher salary band than your colleagues. They will have done it by exception for thr start up to attract talent and possibly due to either the risk or work required.

Either way, nothing illegal here.

They can offer whatever they like obviously, not whatever you like, sorry typo!

Thank you so much, really appreciated.

Statutory redundancy eligibility is 24 months, the OP has worked at the company for 20 months, so to my reckoning that’s 4 months until they could qualify for redundancy.

My typo I meant 4 months