Made redundant without consultation!

[ULA]

Sorry the only exceptions to the 2 year rule for unfair dismissals are those i have set out in post #15.

If ACAS has said you can make a group claim this should be on an ET1A form NOT and ET1 form

A protective award can be up to 90 days’ pay in cases of redundancy but it is down to the Tribunal to decide exactly how many days. So for e.g. if the Tribunal gave a protective award of 60 days pay this would have be subject to tax and NI deductions.

I presume through your research you have also found out that if the Tribunal does uphold the claim and make a protective award since the company is insolvent the government’s Insolvency Service may end up being obliged to pay the protective award. However, they will only pay up to a maximum of 8 weeks’ pay, capped at the current rate of £538 per week.

Also if it is any help there is no minimum length of service required to bring protective award claims where consultation should have taken place.

[jayu619]

Hi ula,

many thanks for your help with this thread and our issue.
One other thing I would like to ask - if you happen to know - the 5/6 locations, is there ANY chance whatsoever going to tribunal showing we are one entity?

I ask because a few places I've read online, have said each case is decided on its own fact, and the Woolworths case only has some relevance to UK law s188 - is this correct? would a tribunal judge rule in our favor given the circumstances we were made redundant if we go as one group even though predominantly across 6 locations?

i have been checking ex colleagues contracts, it mentions that they are located in a specific location but will be required to work at other stores if and when required and often colleagues were working at different sites to cover sickness, holidays, training etc. We even had a system managing all schedules etc that allowed us to 'borrow' a member of staff from one store to another. Would these facts be of any help in this case? I ask mainly because of the 5 out of 6 stores with less than 20 employees...

[ULA]

The Woolworths case was pretty exhaustive given that it went all the way to the European Court of Justice. Unfortunately the circumstances surrounding the redundancy for you and your colleagues is not something that will sway a judge it will be the points of law.

Contracts in many sectors and not just retail, that have a stated place of work, will often require an employee to work at other company location to cover various situations. This will not impact the meaning of "establishment".

I really appreciate that you are trying to fight for all your colleagues but you have to do so on points of law, not that you believe it is unfair that one location should have been collectively consulted with because there were 20 or more people employed there and in the other locations this would not have needed to happen because there were less.

Ultimately it is your decision how you want to proceed but you need to present some strong legal arguments to the tribunal as to why the 6 locations should be treated together as one establishment.

[jayu619]

Hi Ula

Thank you for your comments, throughout the whole thread. I will report back to the wider group and see what they would like to do. It may be that we instruct an employment lawyer for our case or the smaller stores leave it as it is. I will keep you updated.

[ULA]

I hope that my responses have been of some help and I commend what you are trying to do for your colleagues in the smaller stores.

If you have any more questions or your colleagues do, then just come back to this thread and we will try and help.

[jayu619]

Hi Ula,

I had a chat with a lawyer who is a friend of friend, where I was finding out how much they would charge for representing us as a group. I asked about the 'establishment' issue and this is what he said:

"We have got very little information about the other stores at present and the structure of the company, but if we can show they form an “establishment” and that there was a central management function that managed the stores and which was separate from Head Office, then they should be covered".

Based on his comment here, we did have a head office, which was literally following the orders of the US directions regarding SALE, Payroll etc, al of this came from the US headquarters. Nothing was ever really decided from our UK HQ other than local issues. Could this be a a possible argument?

Also, some of the colleagues asked about the payment - would the protective award include deductions of JSA and UC? And what is the period of calculation? I suspect it is from the 9th September to 8th Dec?

Please let me know your thoughts if you Ula or anyone knows. The deductions bit I cannot get my head around.

Thank you

[ULA]

I presume your lawyer friend is an employement lawyer which I am not and therefore respect his experience on the "establishment" issue.

If the Tribunal awarded you/your colleagues a protective award which then could not be claimed from the company as they are insolvent then the Insolvency Service will pay the Protective Award with the amount capped at 8 weeks, in the event you were awarded more than this. If the Insolvency service is paying the award then an individual cannot get a payment for a protective award and claim state benefits for the same time period. If they have received state benefits, or were eligible to claim them, then the Insolvency service will deduct this amount from the Protective Award payment. If an individual was eligible to claim benefits but decided not to, then they will have to deduct this amount from the Protective Award payment.

Also just keep a eye on your timescales if you are going to make an ET claim. As you were made redundant with no notice then the termination date will be the date you were made redundant on which according to your first post was 9 Sept. It is 3months less a day from when this happened for you to submit a claim.