AVIVA Redundancy payment Full time then part time after maternity

Hi

My wife works in Group Pensions at Aviva. Everyone is being asked to re-apply for either their own jobs or jobs in other areas. Aviva offer 4 weeks pay for every year of service, which is obviously good when compared with the statutory amount. However, my question is this:

She has given 7 years service on a full time basis. She then had a baby in March 07 and returned to work last April 08 on a part time basis working two full days per week.

She has been told that her redundancy payment would be calculated on her current part time salary REGARDLESS of the fact that she had 7 years at full time. This would mean she receives aprox half of what she would've had a year ago.

Can this be right? If so I think it's out of order. I'm not one to bleat on about discrimination against working mum's / parents etc as I think on the whole Aviva are pretty good and accommodating, however I think this is a bit naughty.

Does anyone out there agree?

Can anyone tell me if there is anything we can do about this?

Any comments greatly appreciated.

Dannyboy

Thank you for your message Dannyboy. I am sorry about the predicament that your wife is in.

I am glad to hear that Aviva are offering a good redundancy package of 4 weeks pay, for every year of service.

From a legal point of view, I am afraid that as unfair as it does seem, the weekly pay which will be used to work out the redundancy payment for your wife would be the normal weekly gross pay at the time of the redundancy up to the maximum limit. This means that if your wife changed from full-time work to part-time work and is then made redundant, her weekly pay will be calculated at the part-time rate.

Thanks for replying. It just doesn't seem right to me, but then I should've learned by now that life's not fair!

Imagine if you've given 30 or 40 years service and then drop down to part time only to be made redundant. Talk about bitter!

Thanks again.

Dannyboy

I feel it for you dannyboy and thanks for the clarifying Advisor. Imagine this scenario I went through at my last employer.

I was there for 15 years, and over the last 2 years we were told about market conditions blah blah. They came in and told us "take this new deal for terms and condtions" or we will have to make loads redundant. So of course you take the new deal. Then they made us redundant in the end anyhow and calculated out packages based on the new reduced salaries.

I never even considered how the new terms would effect redundancy, so its a warning to everybody.

Felt well and truly shafted.

hello everybody,


Dear "jacks" this is just cause by world crisis. So, don't worry it will be fine very soon. (I hope)