My colleague's husband works in a factory where redundancies are required...
Two blokes, same length of service and terms of employment. Ten redundancies needed
Bill applies for voluntary redundancy and is turned down.
Ben doesn't want to go but is made redundant anyway.
Bill is just average Joe turns up every day does the job.
Ben is dead wood, takes the piss, always on the sick etc,
Could Ben claim to have been unfairly dismissed, on the basis that Bill was happy to leave his job so Ben could have been saved?
Comments
Quite possibly.
Depends, but if a voluntary scheme was open to both of them, and Bill asked and was turned down but Ben was given the P45, then there would seem to be a case.
However, there may have been other factors in the decision which are not apparent, so I wouldn't like to say definitively.
What does the union have to say? They're usually very involved in redundancy situations.
You do go on Dave.
Why not though?
I would guess Bill scored higher than Ben in the selection process. There was no voluntary option offered?
Sickness is usually scored as part of the selection process, So that could explain the scores....
And the scoring process is agreed with the unions before hand
Anyway isn;t redundancy the opportunity to get rid of dead wood, And if the guy who wanted to leave eventually leaves, It wont cost any redundancy money for the company
In deciding selection for redundancy various factors have to be taken into account.
These will/can include attendance, sickness level, performance and flexibility.
A company is also obliged to ensure it retains a sufficiently balanced workforce after the redundancies take place to enable it to continue trading, and to avoid having further waves of redundancies in the following months.