Redundancy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vore
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I worked for the Connexions service for four years until about May, when I was made redundant with some others due to the local government cuts. To be honest they are hacking away massive lumps of the service so it was merely a matter of time but it really does suck. Luckily I started a new job on the last day of my time with Connexions so I was very lucky but start looking and applying now, and apply hard.

Best of luck, it's not fun.
 
Vore said:
So after 5 years with my company I was informed today that my position has been identified as a prospect for redundancy. Having seen how the process was followed a few months back I realise that the decision has been made and it is now just a case of going through the formalities of the redundancy process (under the guise of no decision has been made yet).

The part I am struggling to deal with is that due to the nature of my role I am responsible for multiple technologies and platforms, the comments made today were that the 'management' part of my role was no longer required.

The management part accounts for about 20% of my role, the other 80% is most certainly still required. From what I gather it seems like bumping and they want to rehire elsewhere and this is merely a means to an end.

Pretty cut up, I know lots of others are in the same boat. I thought in the UK a company could not do a mass redundancy and then another batch unless the period was less than 6 months between the two, seems its not the case.

I feel compelled to contest the foundation of their decision based on the fact that they didnt factor in many additional responsibilities, but the other part of me makes me think why would I want to continue working in a place like this? Previous people were let go, as soon as their compromise agreements were signed they rehired other staff in the same role, leaves a bad taste in ones mouth...

Thoughts? Anyone been through something similar?
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WTF? to the bit in bold.
As far as I know (and I could be wrong) an employer can only make you redundant if your position is no longer available; in other words, they can't get rid of you then hire some other duffer to fill your place. That sounds well dodgy. (there's also a bit about financially unworkable - check links)

Based on what you said in the bold text, take all you can and go work for a better company.

How much do you know about the redundancy process?
You should have 5 weeks notice assuming you've had 5 full years of employment there.
I know it's a GD cliché but http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_money/employment/redundancy_an_introduction.htm
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index...cy___procedures_your_employer_must_follow.htm
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index...redundancy_an_introduction/redundancy_pay.htm

You'd be surprised how many employers don't know how to make employees redundant correctly.
 
jumpy said:
WTF? to the bit in bold.
As far as I know (and I could be wrong) an employer can only make you redundant if your position is no longer available; in other words, they can't get rid of you then hire some other duffer to fill your place. That sounds well dodgy. (there's also a bit about financially unworkable - check links)
</QUOTE>
(snipped some)

This happened to me.. they way they do it is that the compromise agreement you sign, is effectively you dismissing all current and future claims against the company for ANYTHING - could be injury, pay, dismissal etc..

I had an issue with a director in the states, and he's had it in for me for the past year. Everything was done to try and get me to leave, but I stuck it out while studying and looking for other jobs. Eventually, the announcement of the big R came.. I wanted out anyway, and they offered me a reasonable amount of money if I signed a compromise agreement. I did, took the money, and learned that wile I was on gardening leave, they got a helpdesk contractor in to do what I had effectively been doing ( my role had diminished from Helpdesk/ERP/Technical to Helpdesk/Technical, so they decided as my job title was "data analyst", they would get rid !

Well, the best bit is, it's only been two months, I haven't eaten into my "compromise" redundancy yet ( 100% of which, including the pay in lieu was tax free ), and I've just secured a job paying more money :-)

So, in a nutshell, you sign the agreement, you waive all rights to claim against anything past, present or future to do with the company.
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^^

yer, I seem to recall something about my compromise agreement after being made redundant myself some while back - no comeback after signing.
Trouble was my company failed to give the appropriate notice, so I 'fined' them a weeks pay for every week that I didn't get statutory notice for redundancy, plus a month in hand, plus another month's pay and my redundancy payout.

I guess the trick is to know your position before you sign anything, in order to keep your interests at the top.

Careful with that cash, now, it won't last as long as you think :D
 
Just out of interest how much notice does the company have to give? Say you've been working somewhere for 4 years and are on 1months notice then how much notice does the company need to give in order to make you redundant - is it a set amount of time + you 1 month or is it just some set amount of time?
 
I would guess that the terms of a compromise agreement will over-ride your statutory rights and as such actually be null and void if tested in court - but thats a whole different story really.
 
That's not true at all. 90 day consultation only needed when over 100 redundancies. Less than that it is 30 days.

Also you can be out the door at the end of the consultation period as they call it in lieu of notice, however this might only be the case where the terms are better than statitory.

The consultations mean nothing too. All they have to do is consult, no agreement has to be met but they must fulfill the exit criteria.

Trust me, I was affected by three separate rounds of redundancies at BAE over the last two years so have a fair idea of what you will expect
 
Can they just pay you for the 90 days + 1 month and send you home? I can't see my firm wanting anyone hanging around and last time we had any cuts the people just disappeared and we found out the next day that they'd been let go. I'm hoping I wouldn't be in line for it but I guess you can never really know in the current climate. I'd want to be taken care of if they just expected me to leave and/or didn't want me going to a competitor or client.

Best of luck with it OP, you might as well explore you options for fighting it - nothing to lose really and better to at least try and reverse it or get a better settlement from them. This has surely got to be a delicate area for HR and I'd assume they would have some budget/leeway in agreeing deals - gotta be worth negotiating.
 
dowie said:
Just out of interest how much notice does the company have to give? Say you've been working somewhere for 4 years and are on 1months notice then how much notice does the company need to give in order to make you redundant - is it a set amount of time + you 1 month or is it just some set amount of time?
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The duration of the consultation period depends on how many people are "at risk" - if it's a few, it can be as little as 30 days, but if you're talking factory shutdown scale, then it's 90 days, or something like that. Lots of stuff online.

As for "notice" as per your contract, I was on "one months notice either side", but for redundancy purposes, the notice is one week for every year service, subject to the minimum in your contract. In your case, effectively 4 weeks = 1 month. in my case, I was there seven years, so got 7 weeks pay in lieu of notice, on top of the redundancy payout - which again is 1 week per year, up to a maximum per week. My weekly was more than the stat maximum so the compromise agreement paid my weekly instead of the stat maximum.

I really didn't care about signing the compromise agreement. I know it was effective/constructive dismissal ( I had amassed a years worth of emails / evidence ), and I had legal advice and they agreed. However, the realistic reward from a court wouldn't have been much more than the compromise payment, and it would have dragged on a while, with costs etc.. frankly I decided to take the money, claim my income protection insurance ( which I haven't hit the waiting period yet, so that's now irrelevant ), and chance it in the jobs market, either permanent or contract, and have ended up with an offer to start in November.

Leaves me with a nice little nest egg ( think 14 weeks pay, tax free ) to invest or blow on red/black/lucky dips ;)

Just read some more of the posts above. Because I'm in IT, I was on gardening leave for effectively a month during the consultation period - full pay, benefits etc.. After the decision was made, I was told that my employment would effectively end at the end of the month, and I would get pay in lieu. I didn't get that or the redundancy until I signed the compromise - if I hadn't, then it would have been a lot less.

Effectively, within a month of being told I was at risk, I was a free agent, and also because of the crap contracts, I was also free to join a competitor if I wanted ! ( I haven't )
 
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Cheers for the reply puckdrop - I'm in a sort of IT/Finance role - I'd wager that if it were to happen to me that there wouldn't be any real warning - rather I'd be given gardening leave and then some sort of agreement. Its good to hear you didn't have restrictions on working for clients/competitors etc.. that would be the one thing that would be a big deal breaker for me if they tried to get me to sign anything to that effect as part of a deal as the first thing I'd likely do is fire off e-mails to friends/ex colleagues at various banks etc...

That's good that you've got a role quickly and essentially got some free money out of it :cool:
 
dowie said:
Cheers for the reply puckdrop - I'm in a sort of IT/Finance role - I'd wager that if it were to happen to me that there wouldn't be any real warning - rather I'd be given gardening leave and then some sort of agreement. Its good to hear you didn't have restrictions on working for clients/competitors etc.. that would be the one thing that would be a big deal breaker for me if they tried to get me to sign anything to that effect as part of a deal as the first thing I'd likely do is fire off e-mails to friends/ex colleagues at various banks etc...

That's good that you've got a role quickly and essentially got some free money out of it :cool:
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Thanks.

You know that you may be marched off site, so some things to do now to pre-empt the situation should it arise..

1) Get all your personal files from your PC / Server and take them home. You may never have access to them again !
2) Send copies of all emails which could be used as evidence to your personal address at home - again you may never have access to them again.

Remember, if you're off-site, your account may be disabled, so you won't be able to get in remotely etc.. make sure you have any evidence you need in your own personal possession ( not even on your company laptop/phone if you have one ).

Good luck.

The IT Market isn't actually that bad at the moment - agents tell me that people are reluctant to change jobs, so usually its only the redundancy victims that are looking, and there are still jobs out there to be filled. Not wishing to blow my own trumpet, but I've made about 80 applications in two months, had about 20 agency "put forwards", leading to about 6 companies interviewing me over the two months. Some with multiple interviews for the same job, another rejected me for one job, then interviewed me again and rejected me again ( lol ) for another job :o

As for the restrictions on competitors.. the company was so lax, it didn't put anything in my original contract, so that couldn't be put in any compromise agreement. All it said in that was I couldn't tell them what I knew ( as in intellectual property, plans, business models etc.. )
 
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I was also made redundant earlier in the year from a government job.

Mine was a little different I guess in that whilst my part of government was being axed with the cuts, I took voluntary redundancy so that I could leave a few months early, still get my nice government payout, and had a job lined up :)

For the people that are still there the department are giving them a golden goodbye in a bit of a sneaky way.

Rather than officially give them their 90 day consultation period and a months notice (or whatever it is for the more than 100 people), they are telling people on the quiet when they are going but nothing official will be told/given until a couple of weeks before.

This means that on top of the redundancy people are getting pay in lieu of notice to the tune of 3 months, although that will be taxed as normal earnings unlike their redundancy.

As for finding another job, it took a while to crack the nut to get offered the first job after being messed around by a lot of companies (some very large well known IT businesses as well, think companies with 2 or 3 initial names...) but since then I've had loads of people interested and am actually moving on again after only 5 months in this job as have been offered something that suits me better.

Still have people calling me wanting interviews but am turning them down now, well actually I'm saying give me a bell in 6 months and see what I'm up to then.
 
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puckdrop said:
This happened to me.. they way they do it is that the compromise agreement you sign, is effectively you dismissing all current and future claims against the company for ANYTHING - could be injury, pay, dismissal etc..

...

So, in a nutshell, you sign the agreement, you waive all rights to claim against anything past, present or future to do with the company.
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No you don't. You cannot sign away you legal rights, no matter what is written on the paper. This is a long-standing principle of British law, and if the company did something illegal (such as replacing your old job with a substantively similar one) then they can still be had by industrial tribunal. Whether it's worth bothering is a different question, but your rights are utterly unaffected by anything you sign.


M
 
It's a sobering experience to realise that the company which you work for and thought valued you, really doesn't give a flying monkey turd and you are just a number after all. However, it's a good life lesson to remember to always look after number one first.
 
Tribune said:
It's a sobering experience to realise that the company which you work for and thought valued you, really doesn't give a flying monkey turd and you are just a number after all. However, it's a good life lesson to remember to always look after number one first.
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This I'm afraid

I was board level at my last company >5000 employees and they do not care about employees unless it suits them.

You are expendable, even other board directors are expendable when they suddenly do not fit plans so remember that always.
As much as companies demand loyalty they will take it and use it, but not give it back.

Its a shame but its business im afraid.
 
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