redundancy

[pink princess]

anyone know the laws on redundancy in the UK?



we have someone at my company being told they may face redundancy...... they are then going to 'farm' her work out to other members of staff..... can they do that? or is it just they cant recruit someone else in specifically for that job?

[CVX]

pink princess wrote: anyone know the laws on redundancy in the UK?



we have someone at my company being told they may face redundancy...... they are then going to 'farm' her work out to other members of staff..... can they do that? or is it just they cant recruit someone else in specifically for that job?


In America, we call that "downsizing."

Unless you are in a Union, an employer is not forced to keep X amount of people on payroll.

Imagine if you were a small business owner. How would you survive if the Government told you how many people you had to hire? If you had 100,000 in sales per year, but you were forced to keep 4 people on payroll and you were losing 25,000 per year, would that be right?

This is why the Unions have lost so much power over the years in America. To compete with this unlevel world market playing field, employers are forced to do things they wouldn't have to do in the past.

[Bothwell]

Depends how long they have been there. they can do it for economic reasons, i.e. they are reducing employess but keeping the same workload. They are perfectly entitled to make her redundant but nust at least pay the statutory minimum, this is currently £208 per year worked I think, I may be wrong but it's very small.

What they cannot do is just sack her without going through the disciplinary procedure or constructively dismiss her by taking her job tasks away.

He/She needs to talk to the union or if they are not a member then the CAB should be able to help.

[Bothwell]

Isn't this route only if she has been employed in the company for over two years?.


yes, that is why I said. "It Depends on How long she has been there"

[pink princess]

sorry i should have given more info



ok, she is the flling clerk here, were a huge mulinational company and some divisions have recently merged, she has worked here for about 5 years now.



they want to reduce the number of admin (luckily im safe) and shes one of them, however they are then intending on bringing a secretary from the same division back into our office (we have more than one in the town im in) to do filing for one specific team and then 'farm' the rest of the filing to the remaining secretaries.....



its a big mistake as far as im concerned, a company as huge as ours where everything we do is project related needs someone to do the filing, otherwise it will get lost not be filed properly etc etc and court cases will loom audits will be failed etc....



makes working here horrible too the atmosphere is awful.... everyone thinks the same as me but noone is prepared to say anything to the bosses.... ive opened my mouth, probably waaayyy toooooo far and itll come back to haunt me id imagine but hey...... it needed to be said and noone else was going to!

[abbey]

Unfortunately downsizing seems to be happening more & more, it must put great stress on the people that are kept on, wondering who may be next.

Generally the rule is, last in first out!