Redundancies at work - I'm pregnant and worried

[iwouldgoouttonight]

We've just found out there are going to be redundancies at work, although we don't know who and when yet. There's no reason for me to believe I will be one of them but I'm really worried because I don't know what I'd do if I lost my job. I'm five weeks pregnant and already have one DS. I'm the main earner out of me and DP and we wouldn't be able to afford the mortgage on his salary, let alone provide for another child. If I got made redundant before I had this baby I won't even get maternity pay but obviously won't be able to look for another job straight away while looking after a small baby. I know there are some benefits I could claim but would they also pay the mortgage, childcare while I'm looking for work, etc?

I'm just worrying because we just get by the the minute and hardly have any luxuries, don't have holidays, new clothes, car, etc so to lose any more money would be very difficult because there isn't anything else we could cut back on. I work four days a week at the minute and work is really flexible with letting me work from home sometimes, etc and I think it would be difficult for me to get the same flexibility somewhere else. I can cycle to work now and if I had to travel further would need to commute, possibily buy a car, so would need to earn more to cover all that.

I'm not sure what advice I want - I just wanted to get it off my chest. I don't want to tell anyone at work about pregnancy yet because its so early so can't talk to many people about it.

Obviously I don't know your employer, but my last employer was extremely reluctant to make a pregnant woman redundant for fear of a tribunal on the grounds of discrimination.

Poor you, what a worry. Perhaps try to get it into perspective - have you been working there for long? How have your appraisals been? Companies have to be clear about their reasons for making people redundant (e.g. last in/first out, or poor quality of work) - so hopefully this will be enough to protect you? Sorry can't give you any real advice but I hope that it will all be ok. Good luck with your pregnancy!

Thanks, I've only been here for just under three years so one I'm of the newest ones here - my job role didn't even exist before I started. My appraisals have been fine so I don't have a reason to think they'll get rid of me because I'm not doing my job well enough - they just need to save money and cutting jobs is the only way.

Sorry to hear you're so worried. If it's any consolation last-in first-out is fairly dated now as a selection criteria, partly because with the new age discrmination legislation it could be seen as a bit iffy, but also because most companies now realise that the fairest and most sensible thing to do is select on the basis of a number of things, skills and experience people offer, performance, attendance and things like that.

I hope that's a little bit of comfort anyway - it's the waiting and wondering that's the worst sometimes so I hope you get some concrete news soon.

Slightly cynical of me, but do work know that you are pregnant?

I know it's very early on, so you probably don't want to tell them yet, but as others have said companies are v reluctant to make pregnant women redundant. You might want to think about telling them if an announcement about redundancies is made, particularly if you think pregnancy might have affected performance over the last few weeks (e.g. nasty morning sickness).

Agree with Ribena it might be worth considering telling them you're pregnant (perhaps a bit later on if you are concerned about mentioning it now, and there have been no formal announcements anyway), as lots of companies might well be a bit paranoid about making pregnant employees redundant.

I would just like to throw another thought into the mix about that.

If you are only on a fairly basic maternity package - statutory only or not much better, you going on maternity leave might be a money-saving opportunity for your company. They could elect not to cover your maternity leave, save at least some money on your salary costs temporarily and then things might have picked up a bit by the time you are due back. So it could be positive for them - a way of saving a bit of money without having to make someone redundant.

There is a bit of a 'but' to that, though. If you have a fantastic contractual maternity package with weeks and weeks of full pay or whatever, the savings they could make by not covering your maternity leave would be minimal if any at all, so that's less of a consideration.

I agree with Flowery on her additional comment. I actually know somewhere where that happened. Their enhanced maternity pay was about 50% of pay for six months, but actually that 50% was enough to tide the department over through the toughest times.
Might have been difficult when the woman came back but, in the event, someone else had resigned and not been replaced by then...