Looking at Redundancy
In recent months employers in certain sectors, such as the building industry, have had to consider making large cutbacks. Making employees redundant is frequently on the agenda – it is always within our top three calls to our helplines - but this has its own risks and may not be the answer to your problems.
Employers unused to HR practices may end up
carrying out redundancies which are potentially
unfair, resulting in unfair dismissal claims being
brought by employees. And it doesn’t end there.
Employers may be at further risk of successful
claims of discrimination and protective awards
made by the Employment Tribunal.
A protective award can be made where an
employer proposes to dismiss as redundant 20 or
more employees within a period of 90 days or less
and the employer fails to follow the statutory
procedures set out in s.188 Trade Union and
Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. This
involves a protracted consultation period of 30
days or 90 days (depending on the numbers of
redundancies1) with elected employee
representatives or trade union representatives. For
the uninitiated this is a complex procedure. If there
are procedural flaws, or the consultation with the
representatives is inadequate, the protective award
made at the Employment Tribunal for the failure is
90 days gross pay maximum for each affected
employee. This can obviously mount up to be quite
a large sum of money.