Employment Law

fto-si

Anyone with any knowledge of employment law?
Heres my question..if a company is in the process of making staff redundant, the unlucky people have been selected and are currently working their notice periods, can the company then offer staff overtime?
This is a situation which could potentially arise where I work and I have been told by one of the members of staff who is leaving that a company cannot legally do this.

nwallace

If they are being offered overtime it may indicate that they are not redundant (because they are needed to do some work so clearly their posts are still required)

fto-si

Sorry, just to clarify. The people that are being made redundant are not being offered the overtime. It is the staff that are staying.

-liam-

Do the staff that are being made redundant and the staff that aren't, all perform the same roles ?

Applying a little common sense to the situation rather than applying unwelcome pressure to an employer already under pressure in the current financial climate, you have to try and look at the long term future of the business and perhaps the employer finds himself in a situation where in the long term he cannot afford to keep the extra staff, yet in the short term has to throw extra man hours at a job, perhaps to satisfy a customer that may not come back should his requirements not be yet, thus putting everyones jobs on the line. Most employers won't take redundancies lightly as obviously, it will limit their ability to expand and their current capacity should there be an upturn in work.

Crapaud

You could have a look on ACAS's web site - I've found them very helpful in the past. There's a free, confidential helpline number on it somewhere.

Citizens Advice are also very good, but it's a trial waiting to be seen.

The last place that I worked got up to a whole lot of shenannigans and it was nice to put them right.

Sorry to hear that you're getting paid off.

Ricardo H

my wife is a lawyer and she said it is fine for them to do this.

The simple fact is that any buisness that is having trouble need to makes sure that everyone in there employment is working to there max ouput just to survive. If your company has a good HR manager they would have made sure everything they are doing complies with current legislation.

Monty Dog

Most companies take the matter of redundancy very seriously and typically consult with legal specialists and ensure all managers are correctly briefed on the process to ensure they minimise the chances for claims for unfair or constructive dismissal. In the current climate, with big declines in orders and sales, sadly redundancy is a means to keep the company trading - overtime is sometimes necessary to smooth out the peaks in demand rather than a way of exploiting the redundancy situation.

dag_on_a_bike

Consult a specialist lawyer. Perhaps you have legal advice/expenses section under your home insurance to get proper advice for free.

I was made redundant a few years ago. I referred the redundancy to my legal expenses insurers as I believed that the redundancy was not handled properly. It was considered the dismissal (which is what a redundancy is) was unfair. I received compensation, in addition to my redundancy pay.

Oh, by the way, my employer at the time was a firm of solicitors and one of the partners was a judge. And they did not deal with the process as they were legally required to.