Conultation period starting at out work. What next?

I will apologise in advance about this long post.

We were informed last week about of companies decision to close one of it's manufacturing facilities in the UK due to lack of buisiness.

At this time the entire workforce was been told not to attend work.

There is a meeting planned for next week that we have to attend and appoint representitives.

My compaines HR has always been useless and I have zero confidence in what they do, everything is always hashed and I find them hugely untrustworthy.

In total our factory employes 130 people and a complete factory closure is confirmed although the company is still trading with huge profts worldwide.

At the moment we are sitting at home waiting.

What will be paid whilst not at work? We work on a shift patten and receive shift allowance for that. Will we be paid fully with shift allowance, minus shift allowance, reduced rate or not at all?

A lot of equipment is being sent to other plants and 40 jobs will be made available at another factory, but it's 150 miles away.

Having no understanding of employment rights and having never gone through this process before I don't know what to expect.

Reading though direct.gov site if <99 redundances are coming it's 30 days notice and if in excess of 100 it's 90 days consultation/notice period if my understanding is correct?

How will that work if 40 people do agree to move to the other factory and leave the total payoff as 90? Will all the people who can't relocate 150 miles away or refused a position have their notice cut if enough people take a job in the other factory?

With the 40 jobs available 150 miles away will the company have to conduct interviews etc to decide on what 40 or will it be at the companies own discretion who is offered a post?

Will the company be required to offer relocation payments to the people who agree to move or is that voluntry if the company offers this or not?

It does say in my contract that I could be asked to work in another place that my employer deems suitable.

What if they said to me I was required to work 150 miles away and I refused? What that mean I could be dismissed rather than receive a pay off?

What would be I be entitiled to as a pay off?
I have worked worked with the company for 12.5 years and I'm in my 30s.

Would I get paid the notice period plus 12 weeks wages? Would wages include shift premium or just based on my basic weekly wage.

Thanks in advance for your advice and any further assistance you can offer.

Right here goes for an update, I was hoping for some response to help but I will update to give other reference and hopefully more advice will come.

The reason we and under consultation as all of our jobs are under risk due to consideration being given to close our factory.

Our factory has been cloosen due to 1)a decline in the order book with no improvment obvious in the near future 2) Two factories within 150 miles doing the same work and no justification for the two.

Firstly the decline in orders has had an effect on the company in total. The company is a global company employing over 30,000 people worldwide.

Our factory has a far greater level of quality, efficiency and what the company keep driving home as most important, safety.

Our factory is far superior in every aspect of manufacturing and company figures highlight that year after year.


At the end of last week some of the workforce had a meeting with senior management(my shift missed it) and after being challenged to the above points suddenly another points were raised although these were verbal and not written justification why our jobs at risk.

1) The other factory is closer to the customer base

2) It's easier to close our factory.

Again point 1 is very weak as our customer base is worldwide with very little work going to the North Sea.

Point 2 is was a really poor thing to say in my opinion.

The guys first point is we all want to fight for our jobs and not just focus on the best pay off.

What can we do to take our arguement forward if we believe we are only being closed on the basis we are a soft target and nothing more substantial?


We have now had out first meeting hosted by the Head of HR who actually in employed and works at the other factory we are getting closed ahead of.

The meeting was for the purpose of getting nominations for people who wish to be representitives.

She read out a statement of the requirements of the representitives all of which were blantantly obvious and what we expected to hear.

However one statement seemed wrong. She read a statement that the representitive should be able to keep some matters confidential between themselves and management.

Why would there be anything expected to be kept confidential between management and representitive who are there on our behalf?



My next problems are connected. The Head of HR was unable to notify us if we were under 30 or 90 days notice.

Surely if you are entering consultation period we should know in advance what period of notice we will get?

It was also confirmed that some people had already entered discussions to move to the other factory.

Surely if we are only under consultation with nothing confirmed they can't possible offer jobs to people from our factory.

I also found out that we only have 112 people left working for us and not the 130 people I first thought.

Is it legal for the company to offer jobs to some when we are under consultation?

If 13 people accept jobs would this drop our notice from 90 days to 30 days and maybe the reason why HR would not confirm notice period?

Again is this legal?

First thing to say is that the notice period is whatever is in your contract, or statutory notice of one week per complete year of service. Assuming there is no provision for longer notice in your contract, you are entitled to 12 weeks notice of your dismissal. As long as there is 12 weeks between the date your dismissal is confirmed and the last day of your employment then your employer's obligations with regard to notice have been met. If they are not able to give you 12 weeks notice in terms of time, they may pay you in lieu of some or all of it and terminate your employment earlier.

Regardless of whether some people take up alternative employment elsewhere, if there are 100 or more jobs redundant at one place, then the length of time between the beginning of the consultation period and the date any dismissals take effect must be at least 90 days. Your redundancy can't be confirmed until consultation has finished.

Regardless of any relocation term in your contract, it's unlikely that a refusal to take up employment 150 miles away would be considered unreasonable so anyone offered it but not wishing to take it up would still be entitled to redundancy pay.

In terms of how they decide who will be offered the jobs elsewhere, I would expect them to first establish who if anyone may be interested in relocating - I wouldn't have thought many people would be, I don't know, it's quite a long way away. It's then fine to ask people to apply to decide if that's the method they want to choose.

They don't legally have to offer relocation money unless there is something contractual to that effect, but I would expect consultation to include discussions about that and I wouldn't expect anyone to be happy to relocate without some financial help.

In terms of your redundancy pay, you'd get 12 weeks, which is capped at £380 for one week even if you earn more than that. If your earnings vary week to week, they should average it over 12 weeks to work out the amount.

If the consultation is about whether to close your factory or the other one, then jobs shouldn't be offered at the other one until consultation is finished and decisions made, no. If it's definite that your factory is the one going, there's nothing wrong with trying to sort out alternative employment during consultation, although everyone affected should have access to the alternative jobs if they're interested.

You need business arguments if you want to persuade the company to close the other factory instead of yours, reasons why it makes more sense for the company to keep yours open. It's their decision at the end of the day which factory to close if they need to close one.

Thanks for the replay.

When is it deemed the consultation period has officially started?

It's now been 12 days since we last attended work.

Since then we attended a meeting to nominate Reps but there was a lot of people willing to put their names forward and it went to a ballot.

The Reps have now been selected and they have been given a brief outline of what might take place.

The head of HR refused to answer any questions today and has already said she will not be answering any questions at the next meeting either. She is only going to supply an outline of what the payoff package might be.

Simple questions have been asked as to when the consultation periods starts (or started) but she has not clarified that as yet.

We have asked about the length of consultation period and again she is still unable/unwilling to tell us about that either.

It has been confirmed although the intention is to close our factory completely and all employees have been given written notice about the situation, some individuals have been approached to keep the factory ticking over. There is a lot of expensive machinery that will have to be removed over time etc.

I know you said it makes no odds to the 90 days consultation period if workers accept a transfer to the other factory, but what if some people remain working at the current facility for 90 days after we are all paid off even though they know their jobs will be redundant shortly?

Why such secrecy, is this standard or is something going wrong here?

The communication is almost zero but the head of HR has a shocking reputation throughtout the entire company for being completely inept at her job.

As for the payoff package that is going to be outlined in the next few days, what should we expect and why the urgency to push this through so early on in proceedings?

There was two previous waves of payoff in the build up the the plant closure. During these payoffs the guys were phoned and told to stay away from work.

They were on full pay for a few weeks whilst scoring systems were used to grade each employee, but with the exception of 2 people through the 2 waves(about 35 employees) all were made redundant.

These guys were paid a weeks wages for each years service, a weeks wage for each weeks notice and then a bonus payment(somewhere around 2k each) paid if they signed a solicitor prepared letter to say they waived their right to contest the decision.

Can the payoff now vary significantly? It's not as if the company is poor, just not making the same amount of billions profit and we are the fall guys even though we have set the example to all the other plants within our group.

Is there any way we can bargain for a better deal or would we be in danger of falling out and being left with the minimum package?

What could we contest to help?

Your help is very much appreciated

Secrecy and lack of communication not standard or good practice, no. if reps haven't been identified yet then I'd say consultation hasn't been started yet as at present there is no one to consult with.

In terms of redundancy package, it would be reasonable to expect the same as others have had in recent redundancy programmes, although whether this would be enforceable depends whether it could be seen as contractual. Your representatives should be negotiating that and finding out if they don't know already whether that package is the standard offer by this company. Not sure what you mean by urgency to push this through early in proceedings. It's standard and also good practice to be clear about financial packages early on, if that's what you mean.

The consultation rules apply to number of employees being made redundant within a 90 day period, so if some will be staying longer than that, the important number is how many will be redundant during that time frame.

The consultation period officially started on Friday but the Head of HR is still refusing to state if it's 30 or 90 days.

We are currently back at work but they are strongly suggesting it will only last 4 more weeks.

However the Reps were provided with the document that the company sent to the Government to notify them of the plant closure.

This document states it is a factory closure due to decrease in business.It states that there is 112 people employed but only states 65 redundances between the end of April and the end of the year.

In total is says 44 jobs are potentially available at the other factory but that does not add up and even then as you said earlier the jobs are still lost here and count as redundances. Also how can she assume is official figures that people will be willing to take jobs so far away?

The company has a minimum of 4 weeks notice so it would suggest to me 30 days consultation then 4 weeks notice taking us up to the end of April.

If the information we have been given is correct all the production employees should be gone after consultation period leaving maybe 20 people in the factory.

From the people left behind their job roles will be completely different. For example the Assembly manager will have nothing to do as there will be no work taking place at all.

So although his official job is redundant he will still be here to keep the factory ticking over until all equipment is moved or sold.

I understand the requirements of consultation notice, but it seems the company is attempting to cut out the 90 days cosultation by holding back unneccessary employees to do tasks that is not part of their job description.

Is this fair and legal?

You are right about the numbers, firstly it's about redundancies in one place, and there will be more than 65 jobs redundant. Even if they argued on a technicality that only that many people will actually be redundant, they can't possibly say that now.

It seems very unlikely that such large number of people will be willing to relocate, and they certainly can't guarantee it. So unless they are saying that many people will be redeployed, rather than could be, they ought to be working on the basis of the whole workforce.

However if some of the redundancies won't take place until the end of the year, then they wouldn't necessarily have 100 within 90 days, which is the key thing for consultation.

It does seem a bit unlikely that they'd keep lots of people on for absolutely no reason for months just to avoid a longer consultation period, and it's difficult to see any argument against it either, really. Those people will keep their jobs longer and keep being paid longer, so they are unlikely to mind very much I'm sure. The fact is if people stay on for a while, for whatever reason, then there will be less than 100 in 90 days which means a shorter consultation period.

But given it's certain the factory will close, is there much to be gained from a drawn out consultation period anyway?

I think everyone is resigned to the fact the factory is closing and although everyone feels it's unjustifyable given the standing of our factory over others, we are now focusing on gaining as good a pay off as we can.

There is little work available in the surrounding area and certainly not to the standard of pay we currently receive and that is everyones fear.

Most of the people that are getting paid off are CNC machinists in the Oil and Gas industry and it's very flat at the moment for all.

I guess the need to hold on and push for 90 days over the 30 is to make sure there is another 2 months wages coming from somewhere.

The redundancy package has been set and through a show of hands all but two accepted this.

One to one, or as it stands four to one meetings start this week.

They have stated that the Reps are no longer required as no further consultation meetings will be required. We are not yet 3 weeks into consultation period and I thought the consultation period had to last a minimum of 30 days?

It's all pretty much done and dusted and we only have probably until the end of next week to go. The mood is very low to say the least.

Not an easy thing to go through but it does not help that the head of HR is the most arrogant, rude and useless person you could meet. A difficult process has been made much harder through all her mistakes, misleading information and childish attitude.

It's a shame so many good people are losing their jobs yet she will return to her role at the other factory.

Thanks for the help on here. It really is appreciated.