Deferred redundancy/maternity leave question

[america]

I've just been told yesterday that my position will be made redundant. I am on maternity leave and was planning to go back to work in October. My position is the most junior in our team although we all do very similar tasks and the only reason to chose me was to do with seniority. Now, I was given an option to either be made redundant right away or defer it until I'm due back to work in October. What should I do? I guess I just have to accept being made redundant but is it better to ask for deferral? Many thanks if anyone can help.

First of all you have extra rights while on maternity leave in that if there is a suitable position then you must be offered it over anyone else and not be made to go through a selection process. You don't mention whether anyone else is being made redundant though so it may be that there isn't a suitable vacancy.

You need to think about what benefits you receive while you're on maternity e.g. pension, private medical insurance, death in service benefit, childcare vouchers etc as you would lose any of those if you accepted redundancy now.