More job panic. Advice please oh Mners wise in the ways of work.

[OrmIrian]

OK. I'm just panicking a little now. After my whinge about my job week before last and being ?asked? to join the on-call rota, I got things in perspective and calmed down.Spent the last 2 weekends looking for jobs (non-IT) preferably and local (so I can still do school run) and found nada. Well nothing that pays anything like enough. We're fairly broke as it is.

Now however I have just found out that the system that is my main responsibility is likely to be out-sourced. ASAP. Totally out of the blue - as part of a general chat with my manager.

My impulse is to tell them to stuff it. Leave now. But if I do get made redundant I will get something (apparently its usually paid at minimum wage levels - is that normal?) and I might get a few months more work. And I'm a little afraid that they will simply try to move me more in the direction I don't want to go - ie away from software development and e-commerce development and towards bloody support for all systems and that 24 hr on-call rota will become an integral part of my job. Can that happen? If they do this and I leave they won?t have to pay me redundancy.

I don't love my job but it's a job and I can't afford to do without it.

Sounds like you need to stay and look for a new job at the same time until ou know what will happen re. redundancies

OrmIrian sorry you're feeling more down about your job. Not sure what they mean about minimum wage levels for redundancy. I expect they probably mean it would be statutory redundancy pay only - ie they don't offer anything over and above. Here is some stuff about redundancy pay. Something also worth reading up on is TUPE here. May not apply but sometimes when a function is outsourced employees currently performing that function should be transferred to the outsourced provider. Can't say whether that applies to you but worth informing yourself in case it does.

Your employer can change your job content see here for info about what is acceptable and how it must be done.

Sorry to give you so many links rather than explain myself but there's quite a lot of information which you might find helpful and the directgov website which I am linking to is really accessible and easy to read so I think it's worthwhile having a look at these links so you feel a bit less in the dark.

With regard to what you should do, I'm with dooley. It is tempting to walk out and tell them to stuff it, but then you won't get any redundancy pay and you won't have a job either. Continue looking for something else, including taking a couple of days holiday and spending the day focusing on the job search rather than squeezing it in adhoc inbetween working and being at home.

In the meantime keep your chin up, post here if you need support, and monitor how things go at work in terms of redundancy/outsourcing/changing job.

Thankyou both.

flowery - what they mean is that they pay a week for each year you've worked there X minimum wage rather than your actual salary. I've been here for 13 years.

Thanks for the tupe thing. I'm not sure if it's relevant but it might be. Just had a meeting with my manager discussing how the software house will duplicate all my carefully (I hestitate to say lovingly ) coding and mappings etc. And make all the new changes required to interface to the new ERP systems that I'd been working on. All I can say is good luck to them.... I've been doing this job for a long time and I've acheived a hell of a lot. It was quite surreal - didn't mention what my future prospects were as I had a feeling I'd burst into tears which is crap for both of us.

Guess I'm going to sit tight.