Change in redundancy periods

[Paulkin]

Hi all,

I work for a well known high street supermarket and they recently lowered the redundancy period from 2 weeks for every year worked to just 1 week.

This happened prior to large swaths of redundancies being announced.

My question is, did we have to sign anything to accept these new terms as the only announcement we got regarding these changes were published on our intranet.

I assumed that any major changes in employees contract of employment would have need to of been signed, which we never did.

Sadly, we are not allowed to join a union so there isn’t any support there.

Any legal info on this would be greatly appreciated!

[ULA]

Does your contract of employment specifically have a clause on redundancy and that in the event this happens then you will be given 2 weeks for every completed year of service?

If it was set out in a Redundancy Policy which are stated as being non-contractual then unfortunately they can be amended.

[Paulkin]

Hi!

Thanks for replying!

There is no mention of redundancy at all in my contract of employment.

[ULA]

Unfortunately the 2 weeks notice is not a contractual right and likely something set out in a non- contractual policy. I suspect they decided they could not afford this with them having to make large scale redundancies.

The one thing I would point out is that for year's of service over the age of 41, the statutory redundancy is 1.5 weeks pay. They therefore cannot reduce that element of an individual's payment to one week.

[Paulkin]

Thanks for the reply.

Do they have to match the statutory gov amount as this redundancy payment is paid by the company on top of the government amount.

[ULA]

No they do not have to match statutory redundancy. It would seem from what you have said that the two weeks and not the one week is in addition to statutory redundancy.

[Paulkin]

Yes that’s correct. They basically just announced that they are cutting the companies 2 week redundancy pay to just 1 week.

I just hoped that we needed to of signed something to accept this new change in redundancy terms or whether it was something that they could just do

[ULA]

Unfortunately if the enhancement of 2 weeks pay for each length of service in addition to statutory redundancy, was not a contractual obligation or part of a union agreement that is has not re-negotiated with the union, then a company at its discretion can change this, given notice.