Made redundant while on Maternity

[Beautymama]

Hi I am looking for advice on my redundancy and whether it was a fair one. While I was on maternity last year I was called into a meeting to say our salon was closing and that we would all (4 staff) be made redundant.

The owner has a larger salon, which was remaining open, same company. I should mention the reason for closure was do to with problems with lease of premises not because it was making a loss. In the meeting the owner said she did not have enough work to take us up to the other salon. Fair enough.

However a couple of weeks later I received an email to say that there was a full time position available at the larger salon and that I was welcome to apply for it. I am usually part time and full time isn't a possibility because of childcare. So I didn't apply and was made redundant.

Got 2 weeks pay as redundancy pay, as I had been working there 2 and a half years. Since this people have said to me I should have been offered my hours at the other salon as a priority as I was on maternity leave at the time? And not have to to apply for a position.

I feel she wanted to keep one of the younger girls all along and said she only had full time as this girl was the only full timer. Since then (mid November) it has come to my attention that the owner has been advertising for staff both part and full time from January, exactly the job i was doing. Any advice is much appreciated as I've done a bit of research but I'm still not sure if my redundancy would be considered fair or not amd would it even be worth taking action. Tia

[jaguarsuk]

Ula

I know very little about employment stuff, but Ula does and will hopefully come along soon.

[Kati]

mariefab is good with employment issues too (I've tagged her) ... although she isn't on very often xx

[mariefab]

I'm afraid that this is a timing issue. You were made redundant in November and the part-time roles weren't advertised until January. So, your redundancy appears fair.

I appreciate that this doesn't help you now; but what you could have done (if you'd known at the time that it was possible) was apply for the full-time role and simultaneously put in a flexible working request to do that role part-time. The owner would have had to show a business reason why this wasn't practicable, in order to refuse, and given the frequency of part-time roles in your line of work she probably wouldn't have been able to come up with one.

[ULA]

Sorry not to get to your post but yes it is a timing issue now.

[Beautymama]

Thanks so much for the replies, I wasn't aware that putting in a flexible working request would have been possible in that situation. Although I had previously asked to change of my hours when my daughter started school and I received a flat out no, no formal justification. It's a bit harder I think in a smaller business with no HR department to handle things like this. Don't want to be seen as an 'awkward or difficult' employee if you state your rights. So I suppose nothing to be done now after the fact. But thank you for the replies anyway