unequal redunduncy pakages, advice needed

shery

Hello , need some advice please

the company is about to make 40 + people redundant within the next couple of month due to its financial situation, last year they had close a small office (15 employees) and offered them a good redundancy packages above the statutory . the problem is they are reluctant to do the same and say they will stick to the statutory redundancy

the question is : Is it legal to treat staff differently within the same company with regards to redundancy packages given that we are all at a similar employee level and similar contractual terms ?

pjcox2005

I'm not an expert but as your post has remained unanswered I thought I'd give my understanding on the subject.

As far as I'm aware, the only requirement for a company is to pay statutory redundancy and anything above this is at their discretion.

I certainly think its acceptable (although obviously disappointing for some) for the firm to have paid a higher amount to individuals last year than they are offering to people now.

Common scenario is that they pay voluntary redundancy/higher packages at first when things start to get worse, but then lower amounts at the end when the company quite often simply don't have any more money to pay out.

Pete111

If there is no redundancy policy in place (which details any enhanced company redundancy pay) then your only real chance is to try to argue that the previous actions of the company re payments have resulted in an implied term and condition/policy being in place and which should be followed here.

What I mean by that is if you are able to show for example, that in the past few years and over a number of redundancies the company has consistently paid say, 2 weeks pay for each year of service you may be able to argue there is effectively a company policy of making enhanced payments.

In practice this is usually quite hard to prove. In addition, the current economic climate might well help convince a tribunal that the firm has an objective rationale for limiting payments to statutory only at this point (you mention the firm is in trouble etc).

It's worth raising in consultation but I'm afraid it will likely be difficult to win this one.

P

shery

thank you so much for your replies , i think we'll just have to wait and see and just hope for the best .