Employment Law

...and don't forget that the company has to operate at least the statutory dismissal procedure. baisically to invite you to an interview, discuss the issues, listen to your representations, and then make a decision in writing. Failure makes the dismissal automatically unfair even if the substantive reason itself is fair - if they get the procedure wrong, they shoot themselves in the foot, meaning that you can get up to 50% more.

You can be be told you are being made redundant, but your are entitled to a notice period as described above. You can be put on "Garden Leave", where you are paid for your notice period but do not perform any duties related to work (popular in the sales and upper management areas, as clients and specialists can be headhunted by staff being made redundant).

If you're being denied this period of notice, the appropriate response is "Could you put that in writing and mail it to my solicitor, please?"

[Viney]

Hmm, a mine field.

Basicaly, someone i know (I dont want to put thier name on here and its not me), they have been told off the record that everyone in the company is being made redundant in 6-8 weeks. However, they have been told that they can reapply for thier jobs.

All i can see is that they have lots of people on different contracts from previous TUPE stuff, and that they want to get rid of some dead wood, and get everyone on the same contract, and no doubt less money.

So as the compnay has around 100 employees, do they have to give this 90 days notice?

Originally Posted by Viney

So as the compnay has around 100 employees, do they have to give this 90 days notice?

If the company knows that they intend to make 100 or more employees redundant then they are required by law to give a 90-day period of consultation.

Sounds a bit sh*tty tho as the employees who re-apply for their jobs could well find themselves in the situation where their service starts from scratch (i.e. no years service), which entitles the company to then make them redundant again on minimum terms, and the such like.

There may well be other terms in their contracts of employment which may well have changed from what they expected or had previously also.

It would also be worth looking into the reasons for the redundancy - as if they can re-apply for their jobs then some roles will hardly be "redundant" and I thought employment law was there to prevent this situation

[Viney]

Interesting.

What it is, is that the company has recently been bought by someone, and the 2 parts have been split. They both still run, but id imagine that they want to put all the staff on a new contract under the new companies name etc.

However, the 90 dyas thing is good.

I know of a similar situation Viney ...

Company decided to "outsource" some of their IT functions. So company makes certain IT staff redundant ... however, they are told they can re-apply for their jobs, but their employment would henceforth be with the outsourcing company.

Their whole employment T&C's changed, but I think there were allowed to keep their "continuous service" (and attached rewards for such). To begin with this wasn't the case and there were a lot of unhappy bunnies.

However, I think the outsourcing company was banking on obtaining the services of some of the companies staff just to fulfill their obligation to the company in the first place, and so I think they were almost forced to concede a few options in the T&C's (continuous service being one).