Part time employee replaced by new Full time emplyee

Hello

My wife has been employed as a editor for a publishing company for 15 years. When my daughter was born ten years ago my wife continued her editing job on a part time basis working from home.
During this time hundreds of book projects for which my wife was the editor have been brought to successful completion.
More recently my wife requested to increase her hours from 18 hrs per week to an average of 21.5 hrs per week. This was agreed to with the proviso that she spend some of this time in at the office. My wife agreed to this and now spends 4 hrs per week (one day 10AM to 2 PM) in at the office.
In addition to this my wife was asked to take on additional type setting work to which she agreed.

During this time my wife has been the only editor employed by her company however on occasion additional editorial work has been farmed out to free lance editors.

Two weeks ago my wifes employer advertised for a full time books editor in the East Anglia paper.

Two days later when my wife went into the office as usual she was informed that the company had advertised for a full time editor, could not afford to employ both a full time and part time editor and so she was going to be made redundant.

Help me please this can't be leagal can it, it certainly does not seem fair.

Thank you for your message although I am sorry to hear about the situation that your wife is in. This may be a fairly long answer as there are a few avenues to explain so please bear with me.

Ideally, the employer should have considered varying the contract of employment to increase the hours that your wife works. She would then have been able to agree or disagree to the change to her contract. You don’t mention whether this was initiated before the redundancy so I will proceed on the assumption that a variation to her contract wasn’t attempted.

Redundancy is a form of dismissal and can occur for reasons such as the job you were employed to do no longer exists, there is a need to cut costs so staff numbers must be reduce or the business is closing down or moving to a different location. As the work that your wife is employed to do is still required, there is the argument that the redundancy is not plausible.

You haven’t specified how your wife was notified about the redundancy but by law, there are certain minimum steps that must be followed, known as the 'statutory minimum procedures'. If the employer dismisses your wife without following this process, the dismissal will normally be found to be 'automatically unfair' in an employment tribunal.

Your wife’s employer should have sent a written statement setting out the reasons why she is to be dismissed (e.g. redundancy including reasons of the hours required). Your wife must then be invited to a meeting held by her employer to discuss the reasons why they are considering dismissing her. Your wife has the right to be accompanied at the meeting.

Before this redundancy takes place, I would advise that your wife take note of the statutory dismissal procedures (above) and contacts her employer to ensure that such a meeting takes place. In this meeting, she should challenge the redundancy proposal on the grounds that there is no redundancy situation because the work that she is employed to do is still ongoing. Make sure any notes of the meeting are kept incase they are required for future use.

After the meeting, the employer will make a decision about whether the redundancy will take place. I would also advise your wife to make suggestions e.g. employing another part time worker, increasing her hours. Your wife has a right to appeal the decision so if the redundancy happens, ensure that the appeal is pledged if you are unhappy about the decision.

In a redundancy situation, the employer should consider any alternatives to redundancy which in your wife’s case seems unusual because the work is still there.

In conclusion, your wife should seek legal advice if the redundancy is carried out for the reason you have stated as you may wish to make an application to the Employment Tribunals with a claim for Unfair Dismissal.

Please keep us posted with the developments of this case as it's useful for others in similar situations. A forum advisor may also be able to make further recommendations.

I really hope this has helped.