Unfair redundancy taking ex employer to court

[Tiredmumno1]

Please help!My partner got made redundant last october,1 monday they called him over gave him a letter 2 say his job is at risk of redundancy,on the friday he was given a letter of termination of employment + asked 2 leave, got paid his redundancy money + that was it,they didnt tell him his right 2 appeal,acas did that got him nowhere, so we instructed a solicitor to take over, he feels he has a case as the procedure was not followed correctly. So much paperwork is conflicting + just lies which we can prove some of the lies, surely this is a good thing, the solicitor was trying 2 go 4 over 50k but just yesterday he had a message from someone that works there saying the ex employer wants 2 offer 3,500-4,000k i think its a joke, does any1 have any advice, or has anyone had an out of court settlement. Ta peeps.

Tiredmummy, someone may post here who can offer you professional opinion, but my experience with this is as follows:

1. to some extent, claims for settlement are like a bartering processes: one party will bid high (£50K), the other will respond low (£2K)

2. some solicitors start with an artificially high bid. this does not always serve to increase the final settlement amount.

3. if the employer are offering a very low amount, they probably have some level of documentation and paperwork that protects their situation.

Unfortunately, the person who feels worst in all of this is the complainant. As soon as your solicitor suggests a high amount, you can start to feel that that is the level that is appropriate.

In the 2 cases I know of in real life, the solicitors bid over £30K and the complainant settled for about £3K.

Sorry if this does not sound very encouraging. As I said, someone may post with an alternative view.

Wouldn't any claim be based on loss of earnings? So unless your dh would have earnt 50k since october it's highly unlikely that he would be offered anywhere near that sum.

he would only get compensation for loss of earnings, so if he has a job now all he would get is a few months salary, less whatever he received in benefits.

In anyy case it is very unusual to get more than 6 months salary - would he have earnt that in 6 months?

Also not sure if there is a time frame - shouldn't he have taken action when he was made redundant 7 months ago?

I just believe they should pay him his loss of earnings + give him an apology. + the reason it is so high is cos the solicitor added the 50% on, which is apparently what the courts would do automatically if its found to be unfair. They r actually scared cos they cant get out of it, there paperwork is a shambles and i reckon they lied about there accounts, i just wonder if they will get in trouble if i can prove they have fabricated the accounts surely they cant do that.

Also he did start taking action almost straight away, its the courts that make u wait. Just one other thing i didnt mention is when they first told him his job is at risk he asked who else is in the pool they said no one, he asked bout a scoring system, again nothing. But after taking legal action, they said in there paperwork that 2 people were in the pool. Then in more recent paperwork the stuck an employee sheet 2008 in, that had 4 people on it, it was just the PAYE employees and scrawled at the bottom it says its the pool of those selected for redundancy, i dont understand how they can keep changing the paperwork and saying different things

You can get one week's pay for every full year you have worked there (or 1.5 weeks if you are over 41 years old. In addition you can claim your actual losses from the date of termination until the date of the hearing but you under a duty to minimise your losses so if your dp has not found another job yet he will have to be able to prove that he has been looking (eg by producing job applications etc). You can also claim a week or two's extra pay for loss of employment rights and any pension loss.

The money doesn not double because you have a solicitor acting - no costs are payable in the employment tribunals unless the employer acts unreasonably so any money for the lawyer will come out of your dp's compensation.

I assume he has already made an application to the ET as if not he will now be out of time.

TiredMummy,

The process would go like this if your DH won his case:

• First, the tribunal would look at his loss of earnings from October until he got another job;

• If he doesn't have another job, they will work out how long they think it should have taken him to find another job. This could be a date later than the date of the hearing, and it would be unusual not to give losses up to the hearing date. However, as others have said, it is rare to give more than six months' pay in total (including any payment in lieu of notice received);

• They will then deduct any money already received in lieu of notice. So if, for example, your DH was paid out a four week notice period and was out of work for 10 weeks, he would get 6 weeks as his award. Statutory redundancy payments are not offset (southernsoftie has explained statutory redundancy payments, which are due even on a fair redudnancy, but bear in mind that the 'week's pay' is capped at £350, so if he earns more than that he won't actually get a week's pay);

• There is no automatic adding of 50%. This is a line often trotted out by employee lawyers in negotiation and, IME, rarely factors into the final settlement sum. Until a recent change in the law, if certain mandatory elements of procedure were not followed, the tribunal would give an uplift of between 10% and 50% on the total financial losses. It is their discretion where on the spectrum they go (and, in some rare cases, they could decide not to uplift at all). Unless an employer is willing to admit total failure to follow the process, they will rarely settle on the assumption that there would have been an uplift (particularly a maximum one);

SO, for your figure to be reasonable as a calculation, your DH must presumably have had actual loss of earnings in excess of £30,000. Is that the case? Also bear in mind that, since the first £30,000 can be paid tax free, this needs to be NET losses of £30,000 (i.e. take home pay, not gross).

Then bear in mind that no one will settle for the worst case amount that they might lose for in court, unless they recognise their case as totally dire (and rarely even then). As I said, I would also be very surprised if any settlement included an amount for the uplift. It needs to feel like a deal worth doing for them too, and factor in the risk that the tribunal might be less generous than your calculations (for example by deciding that it was reasonable to find a job more quickly, or taking a different view on a likely discretionary bonus).

Finally, you will not get an apology. I would say that an apology is forthcoming in maybe 1% of cases, and then it is normally in a mediation setting for a discrimination claim and very carefully worded (a bit like politicians, apologising for upset, not the actual thing and not admitting anything). An apology is not something a Tribunal have the power to award, so if you are thinking of settling, you will need to emtionally let go of expecting an apology.

Sorry if that's all a bit brutal, but sometimes I think it's helpful to be a bit clinical. I intentionally haven't commented on the merits of the case or anything. All of the above assumes that your DH would win his case. In relation to all the other stuff - documents, etc - I think that you really need to speak to the lawyer.