Redundancy selection criteria

Hi

My employer has recently announced that upto 15 jobs may go. Firstly this was issues and it also stated that the company was not going to meet the trade union to decide if redundancy was indeed needed and also possible selection criteria to be used. Should this not have been done before the first letter was sent out?

Next my employer sent out a letter explaining the meetings had taken place and the selection criteria was agreed. The next thing anyone heard was letters stating they had been selected and so were now invited to consultation meetings. Should my employer have given all staff involved consultation meetings and not just those selected. Also i have seen that the consultation meetings should be to discuss alternatives etc but only those actually selected for redundancy were given meetings. So does this show the company had already made up their minds as to who was going to go?

Finally the icing on the cake for me!!

I was not one of the 3 originally selected and received a letter 2 weeks after the original 3 were sent theirs. This was due to an admin error where one sick day was dis-counted as the employee had worked over half their shift before going sick. I was then told at my meeting that we were infact level using the criteria specified on all letters and notices sent out and so now the company would use length of service to separate us. Can my employer suddenly add criteria after issueing the selection criteria in the original letters to advise us of the redundancies?


Finally can someone tell me if my company which is based in airports throughout the UK and are making people redundant in more than one location, should the same or similar criteria be used for similar roles as mine. I have requested to see this but my employer is saying it is irrelevant?

Thanks

Daniel

Unless the trades union has a collective bargaining agreement then an employer is under no obligation to consult formally with the union - recognition, or even having members in the workplace does not give collective bargaining rights to a union. If people are being made redundant at other locations the employer does not have to use the same selection criteria at each location provided, in law, the locations are separate establishments, which they may be.

I am a bit confused from there on in - you say that no meetings about the slection criiteria were held, but then that meetings were held and the criteria agreed. Which is it? The employer should consult on the citeria, and whilst they should be prepared to listen as well to any comments which may avoid redundancies, in the end nobody is going to gainsay an employer who has decided that they will make redundancies. So if the employer did consult on the selection criteria then they have pretty much covered themselves on that matter.

In terms of the crietria, if there is a tie, it is not unreasonable for the employer to add a further criteria provided that is a fair and abojective one. Length of service, as one of several crietia, would be consdiered fair and objective.

I can't see anything that demonstrates that the company had already decided who was to go - quite the reverse, since they had to add another criteria to separate the tied scoring. However, whilst the outcomes of a redundancy exercise should not be predetermined, I am afraid that this is the real world, and the employer generally has a fairly good idea of who they want to get rid of. It is a pretty stupid employer who cannot then develop a "fair and objective" scoring mechanism which will deliver the results that they want - and you would never prove it.

The most successful challenges to redundancy come from employers getting the process wrong - not challeneging the need for redundancies or from challenging the scoring system (unless it is very perverse, and they rarely are). It would help if you could explain the discrepancy in the information about consultations.

Thanks for the reply

Ok to put it all in a nut shell-

From my understanding reading on various websites giving advice on this issues an employer should meet with a trade union (if recognised by the company) to decide on possible ways to avoid/reduce the number of redundancies. Also to decide upon what criteria should be used in the event that redundancies are the way forward.

In my case i received my first letter (24th April) advising that redundancies were possible and that a meeting with the union had been arranged for the 2nd and 8th of March. My point is how can my employer have already selected pools when no consultation process had even been started?
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Next point,

With regards to the criteria, again from my reading the criteria should be set out and be followed in a fair way. Firstly my employer had already calculated one employees criteria incorrectly and so surely this dis-credits the criteria. This then puts me in the frame for redundancy and in doing so also means that a 3rd criteria is suddenly thrown into the mix at the last minute. On my consultation form my manager has actually hand written that due to a tie length of service will be used. My employer would have known that my length of service was far inferior to my colleagues and so im thinking why did they choose this criteria and not get us to attend a interview for instance? Had the tie situation been specified on any documents i received that this would not be an issue.
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Finally on the note regarding other sations etc,
My manager also told me that she and someone in a similar position to her were asked to re-apply for there jobs and one of them would be made redundant. This is the same station as me, is this allowed?
My employers response to this was that the management are not a part of the union?

There are few ways of challenging a redundancy selection process and winning. One of these is to challenge the process as unfair - to do this you would need to show that the overall process, including the original criteria before the tie were not objectivel or objectively applied. The other is to challenge your score, although this is much harder to dispute.In your situation, you are relying on the fact that an additional criteria was added to break a tied score, but in itself there is nothing wrong with doing this, nor with the criteria which was added. As I have said, the employer might have chosen a different way of breaking the tie, but they chose not to - and since the way that they did choose would stand up as a fair and objective way of doing so, you will not have much success on these grounds. Have you asked to review your original score or challenged any of the original scoring which resulted in a tie - if one error was made it is possible that you may be able to find some extra points in this.

Ok well I have my 2nd meeting today, also do u know what if it matters if one of my sick days was actually for a different role I hold within the company. For instance my official position is as a supv, but I also cover duty manager shifts.
Any views on the consultation process as mentioned in my previous thread regarding the issuance of the first letter before consultation with union?.

I cannot see any reason why issuing you with a letter saying that you are at risk before consulting with the unions is wrong. Being at risk is not the same thing as being made redundant, and no decision to that effect had been made.

As for the sick days - well sick days are sick days, whatever role you are performing. The only possible reason for not counting a sick day in these circumstances would be if this was voluntary overtime (ie. not contractual)or if the role of duty manager is an entirely separate contract (i.e effectively a separate job entirely and in no way connected to your usual job). You might get further asking for your scores and arguing the toss about whether these are an accurate assessment under the criteria. Performance related criteria are easier targets than things like sick days or length of service (which are not arguable - they are facts).