Help! Think my Employer has it Wrong?

dbuk44

Hi - my wife's has just left a meeting where she has been told she is being 'let go' due to a shortfall in work.

Background;

• She's been employed 13 months so qualifies for unfair dismissal, but not redundancy money (which needs 2 years)
• She has had no prior notice
• At this meeting she's been verbally told that she has been selected on the basis of her skills. Nothing in writing. Nor was there an explanation of how the arrived at this decision i.e. via a selection matrix or her appraisals.
• She is pregnant - only two weeks ago she told the boss her due date
• One other person in another business unit has been offer redundancy or a pay cut. This person is not accepting the paycut, but the job was not offered to her even though she could do it.
• There are other people in her unit who do similar work to her and have similar educational backgrounds - the only difference is their a) age/experience in the industry b)They are full time, my wife is part-time. They not been put at risk

Sadly she only needed to work one more day after her notice ends to qualify for statutory maternity pay i.e the Monday of the following week. Had they done any consultation it would had undoubtedly have pushed her into the 15 wk qualifying period


29/05: Update, ACAS supported my view that

• The employer hasn't properly consulted before arriving at selection.
• They have not applied objective selection criteria - since they do not appear to have placed similarly skilled people into a pool
• It could be inferred that they have unfairly selected her on the basis of her pregnancy
• It is possible are discriminating against my wife by not offering her a paycut in lieu of redundancy or the job that the other person turned down.

02/06: Update, Letter of Appeal sent by Recorded Post


04/06 - Update, Qualify for SMP. No response yet on the appeal letter but we've now received written notice of notice period, holiday entitlement and expected final pay. Interestingly they calculated the notice period four weeks out from the date of issue - not from the meeting on the 29th. They don't yet realize, but the addition of an extra 2 days notice now means my wife is working into the SMP qualification week! We've now sent them a copy of her MATB1, and asked for arrangements to be made for SMP to start in 8 weeks - the earliest time allowed.


05/06 - Update, Appeal meeting set for the 9th. This isn't fair notification in my view but we're gonna roll with it in order to get this part of the process out of the way as fast as possible.


09/06 - Appeal Meeting, Result!! They started off a little defensively but when my wife whipped out my pre-prepared list of questions they fell to pieces and acknowledged they'd got the process wrong. They came straight out and asked her what she wanted (again,... we had a response prepared), and they've agreed to a pretty good 'compromise agreement' (...though all they've asked for is a letter saying we wont take the matter further in exchange for a cash payoff - doubt if this has the same legal undertaking that a formal compromise agreement via an independant solicitor would have, and therefore she stills retain her rights to an ET ).
I should add that it was our view that a retraction of the redundancy wasn't the primary goal - the company is clearly going down the pan. A cash settlement via them or the ET was exactly what we wanted.

So so sum, from a starting position of 'nothing',

- She's got her SMP
- She's got a good compromise agreement - tides her over for quite a few months
- She qualifies for 2.5k vocational training under ReACT since we live in Wales
- And importantly, we don't have the hassle of a tribunal

Now, who can give me some advice about parenting......

dbuk44

Update:

ACAS pretty much agreed with my view.

We are now drafting a Letter of Appeal on the grounds of:

Unfair dismissal by way of an absent consultation process
Selection discrimination i.e we will infer she has been unfairly selected on the basis of her pregnancy

hr100

You seem to have a very strong case, the redundancy on its own would be unfair dismissal due to the utter lack of any procedure but on top of that is the pregnancy issue.

Send the letter off asap and keep us informed

Pete111

Fully agree

From a professional standpoint it maddens me when employers do this. They need to learn they cannot treat staff like idiots and employment law/process as something for other companies to bother with (and I say that as someone who as part of my job manages redundancies).

You are well placed here to have them over a barrel on a number of fronts - good luck and let us know how it goes


P

dbuk44

Thanks for your helpful comments.

We have sent the boss an appeal letter via recorded post.

It also appears I got my SMP qualification wrong - she only needed to work one more day after her notice ends i.e the Monday of the following week. Had they done any consultation it would had undoubtedly have pushed her into the 15 wk qualifying period.

Note/ Further Help! : I read somewhere that written notice has to be served. They haven't done that either. 4 weeks from now qualifies her - is this a glimmer of hope?

Will update as we go.

george2

good luck, and here's another useful site

http://www.employmenttribunals.gov.uk/

kateab

And here's another

http://www.rjw.co.uk and go to EqualityXpress. They eat people like that for breakfast!

Remember also that if you have legal expenses cover, it will probably pay for a solicitor to take up your case IF they believe you have a reasonable chance of success at tribunal.

I don't understand why people do this - don't they get most of the SMP back anyway. What's the big deal?

kateab

dbuk44

Good result folks - thanks for all the advice.

09/06 - Appeal Meeting, Result!! They started off a little defensively but when my wife whipped out my pre-prepared list of questions they fell to pieces and acknowledged they'd got the process wrong. They came straight out and asked her what she wanted (again,... we had a response prepared), and they've agreed to a pretty good 'compromise agreement' (...though all they've asked for is a letter saying we wont take the matter further in exchange for a cash payoff - doubt if this has the same legal undertaking that a formal compromise agreement via an independant solicitor would have, and therefore she stills retain her rights to an ET ).
I should add that it was our view that a retraction of the redundancy wasn't the primary goal - the company is clearly going down the pan. A cash settlement via them or the ET was exactly what we wanted.

So so sum, from a starting position of 'nothing',

- She's got her SMP
- She's got a good compromise agreement - tides her over for quite a few months
- She qualifies for 2.5k vocational training under ReACT since we live in Wales
- And importantly, we don't have the hassle of a tribunal

Now, who can give me some advice about parenting......

The_Pedant

Sounds like you've got a reasonable compromise.
Great news, if you're happy with what's on the table.

Good luck with the family!!:j

PaulLuke

My wife was selected for 'redundancy' within a matter of days of informing her boss that she was pregnant. Despite a mountain of evidence pointing to poor process/very questionable selection grounds etc we had to fight this all the way to the end which took the best part of two years (eventually settling just before the we were due to go to tribunal), threatened the pregnancy due to the stress and made it far harder for my wife to bond with our new child.

Getting a satisfactory conclusion at this stage is an excellent result, meaning you can get on with your lives and enjoy live with your new child!!

Valli

WTG dbuk44 and Mrs dbuk