What You Should Know About Redundancy
There are often headlines about businesses cutting jobs and people facing redundancy. In January this year, Jaguar Land Rover announced it would be making ten per cent of its workforce at its Halewood plant in Merseyside redundant, for example. The Mirror reported that some 4,000 people and 500 agency staff work at the plant, so over 400 are likely to face redundancy in the coming months. The reason for the reduction to the workforce is that the automaker is moving from a three-shift to a two-shift pattern from April.
A spokeswoman for the firm said: “Through its ongoing transformation programme, Jaguar Land Rover is taking action to optimise performance, enable sustainable growth and safeguard the long-term success of our business.” She also explained that the company plans to offer voluntary redundancy to workers in the first instance.
Engineering firm Renishaw is another firm that announced redundancies this year, but it will use compulsory redundancy to reduce its UK workforce by approximately six per cent, the Gazette reported. The organisation has seen its profits plummet from £32.6 million in the first quarter of 2018 to just £4.3 million in the first quarter of 2019. Around 200 staff in the UK are expected to lose their jobs as a result, with a Renishaw spokesperson telling the news provider that the firm has already “undertaken a wide range of measures to improve productivity and reduce its cost base”. “As payroll is the company’s highest cost contributor, the board has regretfully decided that it will be necessary to consider further UK compulsory redundancies,” the spokesperson added.
Mothercare, meanwhile, is another example of a firm where staff have been made redundant. In this case, it’s because the retailer went into administration in November last year. This means that anyone who lost their job as a result of the company’s collapse will need to apply to the government’s Insolvency Service to make a claim for redundancy or other costs. These three examples illustrate different scenarios you might face if you are made redundant, or at risk of redundancy.
In the Mothercare example, the company has ceased trading, so there is no chance that you can redeployed in another role within the business. Because the retailer has gone into administration, any former Mothercare employees who have an employment contract and live in England, Scotland or Wales, can apply for their redundancy payout via the Insolvency Service. The Insolvency Service states that it aims to pay all eligible claims within six weeks of receiving them.
If you find out that your job is at risk of compulsory redundancy, there are a number of places you can go for advice. The Money Advice Service and Citizens Advice both have guides to redundancy on their websites, outlining what you can expect from the process. Under your legal redundancy rights, you have a right to fair process. This means you should be consulted about the redundancies, that your employer should follow the right selection process and give you a proper notice period.
Employers must use a fair and objective process to decide which jobs to make redundant. You are entitled to know what this process is. If you feel that you’ve been chosen unfairly, you can normally appeal the decision to make your position redundant. The grounds for an appeal of this nature could be because you were selected due to your gender, age or race.
The amount of notice your employer has to give you varies depending on how long you’ve been with the company. All workers who have been at a business for more than 12 years are entitled to a minimum of 12 weeks’ notice. If you’ve been working for a business between one week and two years, you are entitled to one week’s notice. For anyone employed at a company for between two and 12 years, your notice entitlement is one week for every year that you’ve worked at that business.
Employers are also legally obliged to carry out a consultation before making anyone redundant. If they are a small business, with fewer than 20 employees, they are only obliged to hold individual consultations with everyone who’s at risk of redundancy. Companies that employ more than 20 people are required to consult collectively with their workforce, but individual consultations in this instance aren’t legally required. They are considered to be good practice though. If you have a union rep, the company should consult with them as part of this process. If there’s no union rep, this part of the process should be carried out with your elected employee representative(s).
Voluntary redundancy, which is what Jaguar Land Rover is proposing at its Merseyside factory, is different again. In this instance, your employer will offer you a redundancy package in exchange for you leaving your job. As Citizens Advice explains, volunteering for redundancy isn’t a guarantee that you’ll be made redundant. Once you volunteer to take redundancy, your employer then has to decide which people of those who volunteered it will let go. If you’re chosen, you should get a letter from your employer confirming your redundancy and redundancy package.
Redundancy can be a tricky thing to navigate, particularly if you’ve never experienced it before. If you’re concerned about the way in which your employer is making people redundant, or aren’t sure what it means for you, you could benefit from getting advice from redundancy solicitors.
With the UK having left the EU on 31 January, there is still uncertainty about how this will impact the country’s economy. The Guardian recently pointed out that there are still potential risks, mostly surrounding the likelihood of the UK agreeing a trade deal with the bloc before the transition period ends in December. The newspaper noted that while there was a bounce in business confidence following Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory in December, there are still concerns that this improvement could be “short lived if the country appears to be heading for a disruptive no-deal scenario at the end of 2020”.
Lennons Solicitors is a leading Buckinghamshire-based law firm, with offices in Chesham, Amersham and Beaconsfield. Talk to us today on 01494 773377 or email us at hello@lennonssolicitors.co.uk
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