Redundancy By Bully-ET help !

Crunched

Redundancy By Bully-ET help ! Made redundant. Told beginning Jan 2009. Not massive monetary amount but will help me as still out of work. The employer is the owner. It is a small business.

Employer refusing to pay full notice pay entitlement. The amount outstanding is 6 weeks 2 days I have been employed for 9 years for this company.

Submitted 28 day notice on 26 Jan for payment of December/ January wages, notice pay and redundancy monies Sent in ET1 early (after 20 of the 28 days) for all the above and given Tribunal date of April for all except the redundancy. . Eventually paid in mid Feb (wages and part notice) and March (all redundancy) so now just one matter outstanding. Reason employer has given In ET1 response for not paying full amount of notice/PILON pay is as follows. (Some bits deleted for obvious reasons -)

""I have written and informed the claimant that appropriate notice was given to him in accordance with regulations. I have given verbal notices to all in office in November 08, in October 08 and other times that unless business picks up I will have to make them redundant. The claimant has argued that this was not in writing (I haven’t, he has got me mixed up with another employee!)but my understanding is that it does not have to be. I have on many occasions told everyone I would make them redundant as I was not able to keep borrowing money to pay them.""

In March a letter to me containing Redundancy money had the following paragraph:

""As for notice pay. You were right you were entitled to 9 weeks of Notice.(He had earlier told me I was only entitled to four weeks) However, notices do not have to be given in writing, In November 08 and October and other times last year.there have been lots of talks and notices to everyone about the way things were going. Other staff clearly remembers them. In other words you were all given well longer than 9 weeks’ notice according to ACAS and an employment lawyer I have spoken to""

Some questions then please……..

1. Does he have any point? Will I have to go to tribunal or can this be dealt with by judge just looking at the response given by employer.

2. Is it worth me considering an unfair dismissal claim? because the meetings he refers to, I (and two others made redundant at the same time as me) were not told that we were going to be made redundant, The first we heard of it was verbally at the start of Jan when we had to ask for it to be confirmed in writing which was then done so two days later. My job is being done by another member of staff at the time of writing.

3. If I were to go for unfair dismissal do I have to go via him first with a grievance because this is likely to be very stressful for me due to the way the owner is conducting himself.

Any help and advice greatly appreciated.