Redundancy Terms and Notification and Shifts

Hi,

Our company have announced "proposed" redundancies. However, they have just changed the terms from 3 weeks for every year to 2 weeks for every year capped at 20yrs. There was about 2 weeks between changing the terms and announcing the redundancies. Is this legal to act so soon after changing the terms?

They are also giving 1 weeks pay for each complete year as the severance. Is this right or should it be 90 days.

Also, after the redundancies they are moving the remainder from shifts to days and consequently will be losing our shift pay.

The current shifts are 6am - 2pm and 1:30pm - 9:30pm.

They are saying the working days will be staggered at: 7am - 3pm and 11am - 7pm

Is this still not a shift?

Any help much appreciated.

I don't think I have enough information to give a very full answer but I will do my best.

Whether or not the change to the redundancy terms is lawful will depend on how it came about. If this is part of a collective agreement with a recognised trade union and this change has been agreed with the union, then it is likely to be lawful. If, however, this is not the case and they have unilaterally made the change with no agreement from employees (or the union if appropriate), then it may be open to challenge.

There may be a question, however, over whether or not the redundancy package is contractual. If it is clearly written out and stated as contractual it is a no brainer. If every time there is a redundancy the package on offer is different, then there is an argument to say that it is not contractual. If nothing is actually written down but they have regularly given the same package then you could argue it is contractual through custom and practice.

By "severance" I think you mean "notice". If that is the case you need to check what your contract of employment says. If there is no contractual notice then you are entitled to statutory, which is one week per year of service up to a maximum of 12 weeks after 12 years.

The change to shifts and shift pay sounds like it is likely to be another contractual change. If that is the case they should be seeking the agreement of the remaining staff to the change. Otherwise, they need to terminate the existing contracts under notice and offer the new terms to commence at the end of the notice period (some employers sometimes give notice of the change, which in reality amounts to pretty much the same thing)

Pete

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

The change in terms was agreed through the union. They basically gave a presentaion at each site to explain how bad things were financially and then asked us to change redundancy terms. We voted against this at our site, but believe the other sites voted for it. We have had no official confirmation of this, then 2 weeks after we voted, the redundancies were announced.

Regards the shift work, is there anything in the law that defines what is considered shift work?

Thanks again.


Colin.