Collective redundancy

[MinnieMountain]

Can anyone help me on the subtitles of collective redundancy please? I’ll ring ACAS when I’m back in England on Thursday but need some clarity before then.

My branch office got put on notice of collective redundancy last week because we are no longer financially viable.

We’ve nominated representatives for our teams. My team does a support role across all 4 offices, but we’ve been given 1 representative to cover us and a team who only work at the branch office.

Does that mean that the 2 teams will be considered as one, even though we perform different roles? Is that allowed?

My teams manager is based at a different office (head office) whereas the manager of the team we have been put with is only at our branch office.

Consultation is complicated.

Depends how they define the “establishment” and the roles. If you all do the same job and all have the same place as your contractual base, you’ll likely be in the same pool for consultation/redeployment/redundancy.

You’ve not given enough detail to fully advise.

I appreciate your points @ItTook9Years .

I work for a licenced conveyancers. My office was bought by the main company and legally amalgamated to it 11 months ago. There are 4 offices and various fully remote staff.

My office has technical legal support (my team) who provide advice for colleagues across all offices, legal administration support (ditto), sales (no idea), and fee earners who are purely based at my office. And a few individuals such a the office legal director, IT and HR.

We’re a week into the 30 day consultation period. My team is concerned that because we have been given the same staff reps as the fee earners rather than our own we will be considered with that group.

what is the proposal?

i wouldn’t read anything into the staff rep piece - they’re literally just a funnel into the consultation.

Does your employer intend to close the entire office? If so, what do you think would be gained by having separate reps for each team?

That’s a relief @ItTook9Years .

I’m not entirely sure what the proposal is beyond potential closure of our office. I was sent a copy of the statement announcing it as I don’t work on that day and I’m away on holiday right now.

If they are closing the entire office, I'm not surprised they are treating it as a single team. There isn't really a great deal to consult about. Unless you can convince them to keep the office open, the only options are to take redundancy or accept a role at another office (if there is a suitable vacancy available).

Perhaps I haven’t been clear @prh47bridge . My technical support team provides a service for the whole company, we are able to work entirely remotely and our manager is based it head office. Therefore we want to be able to argue that our roles are still needed.

If they can outsource the function they can make your team redundant .

@LIZS they’re not outsourcing the function. My group of 4 in the branch office are a fully-integrated part of one team which does work for all offices in the business, not just the branch office.

But presumably they either don't need that work doing or they have other resources to do so.

There’s no presumably about it @LIZS . We’ll be arguing that point with our employer, not a stranger on the internet.

My question is whether there is any significance in being given the same employee reps as a team who perform a different function.

I've just been through the redundancy process myself, so my sympathies to you. Was the most stressful time of my life!

With ours they were relocating all branch staff to one central office, far away from me. It was argued this wasn't needed, as we all wfh anyway so they agreed to keeping branch staff but any recruitment would be done to the central office only.

But there was still more staff than available posts. So it was decided on what your job description matched. So either direct match, similar or non viable.

I was lucky as I actually secured a promotion with ours, but we lost half the team ultimately.

You would need to make a business case to keep your jobs if what you're saying is it can be fully wfh. I think it's called a counter proposal.

You posted for strangers on the internet, so it would be nice if you were at least polite. If you don't want the advice of strangers on the internet, perhaps pay for a lawyer (or a union in future!).

Being put at risk does not, technically, imply any particular outcome because that is the point of consultation - for the employer to consider the range of options both through collective and individual consultation. A "representative" for collective consultation does not represent any specific interest other than the identified gorup of employees - so in your case, everyone in the office. They should represent all views to the employer, and they should communicate the employers views to everyone in their group. It is not only not unusual for the representative to cover a range of employees, but in the case of unionised workplaces the representative may not even work for the employer.

Until you see the employers proposals going forward, speculation is pointless. They may have plans to locate your team elsewhere, to dispense with them altogether, or something else entirely. But at the moment all they are saying is that your workplace will not exist going forward and so that means that your job based in that office is at risk. There may be no actual redundancies at all. There may be some. Or all staff may be redundant. But that is what you need to be seeking to address, not diverting your attenbtion to who is representing the office. They should be representing you all, but each of you individually have full rights to say and contribute as you wish.

Thanks @EmmaMaria . Perhaps speak to acas rather than strangers on the internet if you are going to dismiss replies. Representatives can be by team, location, management level etc and it should not mean your questions are ignored if the rep is from a different team. Further down the line you would have individual meetings.

As I explained in my OP, I can’t ring ACAS until I’m back in England on Thursday, so I was seeking a rough idea before that for clarity.

You’ve given me a much better idea of how it works @EmmaMaria .

Personally I don’t think that asking someone to stop repeatedly asking me a question I thought I’d answered is rude, but there we go.

Many thanks to the people who have been helpful.