Consultation period discrepancy?

Malamute_2

Hi everyone,

i am posting here for a bit of advice.

I work for a large railway company which has around 6 years of a franchise agreement to run.

We were called into our managers office last week and told that our consultancy period had started (not sure of all the ins and outs of this but i`m trying to learn fast) apparently our consultation period is to be one month from start to finish.:eek:

From what i`ve been reading online it seems that our consultancy period should be 90 days as over 160 jobs are to be shed and i`m wondering how the company has got around this.
The job losses have been broken down into groups ie x amount of office staff x amount on trains and x amount in other departments etc

My question i suppose is how have they managed to get around the 90 day consultancy when over 100 employees are to lose their jobs?

Is there something about railway company franchises that makes us different from everyone else? I`m finding it hard to find anyone who knows anything about redundancy and our union reps are struggling to keep up and inform us of things so i need some brains to pick please

I hope that i`ve managed to post clearly as my understanding of these things is very limited.

Thanks
Mal

BlueIsTheColour

As far as I am aware if a company is making over 99 employees redundancy the consulation period is definitely 90 days, even if the mix of employees comes from different departments etc, as long as they are employed by the same company. They also have an obligation to notify the government too.

I would have thought your union reps will be on the case, if not, give em a nudge, its your future after all, thats what you pay subs for, help when you need it!

Jupiler

Hi Malamute,

I'm also being made redundant by a large railway company (though this one runs freight trains), and have experienced the same discrepency with regard to the consultation period.

In our company around 540 jobs were put 'at risk' nationwide, and about 25 posts at the location where I work. This is where the interpretation of the 30 or 90 day consultation period comes in.

The wording of the requirement for a consultation period quotes the number of affected people at a particular 'establishment'.

Whilst myself (and many others, including our union reps) thought that this reference to 'establishment' referred directly to the company as a whole, it seems it has been defined officially to refer to individual locations within a company.

Thus, when only 25 people at my work location were put 'at risk' although the total nationwide throughout the company was over 500, we were only given a 30-day consultation period, instead of a 90-day one.

This despite a significant proportion of our work being transferred to another, much larger, location where over 75 (but less than 100) people were 'at risk'. One could argue that it was a cleverly-designed re-organisation to fit within interpretation of the rules on consultation periods.

The consultation period locally was a bit of a sham anyway with all points and suggestions raised just being met with 'it doesn't matter what you say or raise, no changes to the proposals will be made'. Ho hum.

So, I've just been given my three months notice. Clearly there's no point me applying to your company for a job at the moment either. I hope it works out OK for you.

Finally, there are a few paragraphs on the redundancy and consultation process on the TSSA Union website at:
http://www.tssa.org.uk/article-46.php3?id_article=1755

All the best!