Unfair dismissal or not??

Hi,

I would like to say thank you in advance for taking the time to read my post and any information provided in response will be much appreciated.

I am a fixed term contract employee and have worked on successive contracts for just over two years, I was recently informed that I am to be made redundant as my post is going to disappear due to a lack of funding. I work in a team of four people, the other three being permanent employees.

I was advised that as I have been working for over two years that I qualified for redundancy payment on termination of my contract.

I looked online and found that as a fixed term employee it would be considered unfair of my company to discriminate against me when considering redundancies but when I asked this at my meeting was told that this was not the case, I received my notice of redundancy two days prior to my meeting and was not given any at risk letter or chance to be a part of the consultation phase i have been informed that i had no rights to have this as my contract was due to run out at later date.

I have found out that my HR dept used live data when logging a call with my team regarding a mailmerge that was to mailshot all the redundancy letters out (I work in IT) and know that members of my team new i was being made redundant weeks before I was supposed to have my consultation meeting, the data leaked also contained 100+ more people within my company that are to be made redundant some of which have not been told yet.

I have had two notices of redundancy letters both containing differing reasons to why i am being made redundant and when I put my appeal in this contained a 3rd reason.

1st reason: organisational change waiting for a comittee vote
2nd reason: redundancy
3rd reason: funding run out

I know that permanent employees within my company have been given at risk letters and are being consulted properly it just seems that they have identified fixed term employees as myself as easy targets.

Should I have been put at risk?
Should I have been consulted?
Should I have been chosen for redundancy out of my team purely because i am the only fixed term worker?

The whole process has been a sham, everytime i have fired them a question they fire back an answer just to assist them in getting me out of the door, my right to appeal the decision was a farce if they are using funding as a cause for my redundancy as they had no intention of giving my a fair appeal, my supposed consultation meeting has been told to me in writing that it was to give me my notice of redundancy (some consultation meeting)

I have never been sick, im considered the hardest working member of my team and have the stats to prove it, i have been highly reliable to a point that i manned the helpdesk on my own on snow days when everyone else could not get into the office even though I have to travel the furthest distance.

Have I got grounds for unfair dismissal?

Many thanks for reading my post..

Based on what you have said, yes, I think you do. In redundancy terms, you have the same rights as any other employee who has worked for over two years, and the only exception to this is where an employer can objectively justify making someone on a fixed term contract redundant without including others in the matter. "redundancy" defiitely isn't one of those (that's a judgement not an explanation); "awaiting a committee decision" isn't either - and "funding run out" definitely isn't because there is already case law saying that this is not acceptable grounds! I would suggest you make a claim.

Thank you for the response to my post, I shall start looking into it.