Made redundant one week after grievance meeting.

[GreenShark]

Hi Beagles,

My company is making me redundant and I strongly suspect it is because I put in an informal grievance against my director. I basically wrote his managing style is upsetting a lot of people and making tasks a lot longer than needed. I had a meeting with the other director and she completely disagreed and said if I don't like it here I can leave and let her know by the end of the week. I promptly said "I was a bit hasty and wanted to stay here", purely to keep my job.

A week later I’m told I may possibly be made redundant as they no longer need design work (it’s a small part of my job). It’s a small company and I actually do many things, some of which no one else can do and the others they can’t do well (I have an ICT, marketing and design background and they are passing most of my work onto the assistant accountant). The redundancy is to cut costs apparently. Since the grievance the directors have hardly spoke to me and I suspect even though they went through procedures for me to suggest other work they had no plan in doing so.

To me what makes it double suspicious is that I requested flexible working hours for Friday afternoons and they declined on the basis I was too highly needed and could not be replaced in these times. Over the last 2 months they have increased pressure onto me to train other members of the team so that I am not the only one who knows things in the office as a kind of back up. Although now I suspect it was not for backup at all whilst I am here.
I have been offered minimum redundancy and asked to work my work notice.

My question is do you think I could have reasonable grounds for an unfair dismissal claim or strong argument for a higher redundancy package based on that I could have been unfairly dismissed?

Thank you for your help

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[Kati]

Re: Made redundant one week after grievance meeting.

tagging [MENTION=51026]Ula[/MENTION] [MENTION=26290]mariefab[/MENTION] xx

[ULA]

Re: Made redundant one week after grievance meeting.

Firstly how long have you been employed by the company?

For redundancy to be genuine, the employer must demonstrate that the employee’s job will no longer exist. Are you the only person doing the job that you do or are their other people, in which case all personnel doing that role should be put in an "at risk pool" and then selection criteria should be applied. Throughout there should be a due process of consultation giving time for exploring any alternatives to redundancy.

[GreenShark]

Re: Made redundant one week after grievance meeting.

Firstly how long have you been employed by the company?

For redundancy to be genuine, the employer must demonstrate that the employee’s job will no longer exist. Are you the only person doing the job that you do or are their other people, in which case all personnel doing that role should be put in an "at risk pool" and then selection criteria should be applied. Throughout there should be a due process of consultation giving time for exploring any alternatives to redundancy.

Thank you for your response. I have been there almost 3 years but I know that only counts as 2.

Essentially they will outsource the design work from now on and my other tasks other people in the office can do just not at a very high standard which they will probably only realise a few months down the line.

This has been going on for a few weeks and I suggested a few things that I could do but they declined and they didn't suggest anything as they have no current vacancies.

[ULA]

Re: Made redundant one week after grievance meeting.

Thanks for your response - I was just checking to make sure you had more than 2 years service.

I have a feeling that from what you have said about how they will deal with the function of your job if the position is made redundant, they feel that they can demonstrate that your position is redundant.

That aside as pat of the process you should be given the right to appeal against the redundancy at which point you can write to them setting out the grounds for your appeal based on the facts that you believe the reasons you are being made redundant is because a) you requested flexible hours on a Friday afternoon and b) you raised an informal grievance against one of the directors which actually makes it an unfair dismissal rather than a redundancy situation.