MattW

The wife has been offerred the chance of VR and has applied because the liklihood is that all the roles will be off shored at some point, so might as well go now.

However it looks like the individual offers will be made either today or tomorrow afternoon. I thought that there was a code of practice that prevented redunancy notices being issued on a Friday. Is this true? and would it apply in this case as the offers will be merely offers at this stage and the individual would not be obliged to accept.

Drunken Bungle Whore

Hi Matt!


Nothing about Fridays that I've ever come accross - though I'm not an expert in Redundancies.

Has her company been through a proper consultation period? Ideally this should be a period of 4 -6 weeks where they discuss alternate internal oppportunities and/ or offer advice about redundacy (and re employment elsewhere if it's a really good company) - will dig out a code of practice for you.

Drunken Bungle Whore

Here's a bit about consultation periods etc. Sorry it's not a clicky link, but it's from the CIPD website and "if you're names not down you're not coming in" - though I'm sure that's not too much of a problem for some NSR chaps!


Consultation



If dismissals are proposed, consultations with recognised trade unions or elected representatives must start at least 90 days before for 100 or more employees and 30 days before for 20 - 99.

Although the law prescribes consultation only for multiple redundancies (more than 20), case law makes clear that consultation is also necessary for individual redundancy certainly with individual employees, and possibly with employee representatives.

Case law continually evolves, and keeping abreast of relevant decisions is vital.

The law requires meaningful consultation - it is not enough only to inform. In collective redundancy, employee representatives must have written notice of the:

• numbers and job categories
• reasons
• selection criteria
• procedures and time-scale
• compensation if different from the statutory formula.

In addition, consultation must include discussion on ways to:

• avoid or reduce redundancies
• mitigate their consequences.

For individuals, case law indicates that discussion should include:

• why and how individuals have been selected
• possible ways of avoiding redundancy
• possible alternative work.

scoob_babe

Looking at that, I can see I did get 'done over' (incidentally it was mid-afternoon on a Friday too!) as there was no consultation prior to the 'sorry you're out' speech either.
At least things worked out for me - it was a crap company to work for (lucky the other consultants were cool) and it paid the mortgage and I found something better!

MattW

Thanks DBW

It's a complicated situation, basically she was tupe'd out to an outsourcer a year ago who promised guaranteed jobs for one year. They moved some roles, including my wife's to another EU country but gave my wife a similar graded position. Recently the company announced a big reduction in workforce but just prior they announced possible VR within the contract.

Interestingly, although nothing was written, it was inferred that if they didn't get enough volunteers they would have to do some CR's on reduced terms. My wife has a guarantee for two years that her previous terms are valid (one month per year service + 3months) so I suggested she sit tight as CR would have surely been no different to VR. However just before the deadline, they announced her role would move to Hungary.

She is part time 3 days per week and wants to go term time when our eldest goes to School in Sept., she wanted to stay as finding jobs that would be prepared to offer term time must be quite hard, and due to logistics with no family locally or after school care its not possible for her to work full time.

Anyway, her job moves in June but potentially could be delayed, we were faced with her volunteering now or going later in the year when her term time contract would have meant a reduction in redundancy pay.

So the situation is they are about to "offer" VR to a number of people, there has been no consultation or anything else. This is also a very large company, in fact the biggest globally in what they do.