redundency pool?

vodntonic

hi my husband has been chosen for a pool of redundencies. his employers are using a points system where employees of giving points for certain things like, attendence, finishing tasks when asked, certain areas of the work, being able to run a crew etc...... he has been there 8 yrs and has quite a number of points however others have less and been there less and arent being considered. they have also hinted that its a shame about the sick leave he had.( he had heart surgery 18 months ago and is now fit as a lop) can they do this? they are also keeping him dangling about a final decision, cant sleep. is this right???:(

dickydonkin

can they do this?

They possibly can as I suspect the illness would not be covered by the DDA - although I stand to be corrected on that.

There is nothing wrong with using sickness in a redundancy selection matrix, but the fairest method is by the number of 'events' of absenteeism - not the actual time off.

For example, there may be a worker who over a year, has the odd Friday and Monday off which for the sake of argument, totals nine days over the year. This results in nine 'instances' of sickness absence.

Now take your DH - He may have an exemplary attendance record, but through no fault of his own, had a serious illness that resulted in him being off work. Again, for the sake of argument, he was off for six continuous weeks in the same year - that is only classed as one period of absence as opposed to the other guys nine.

Which is fairer?

He needs to mention in the consultations that this is unfair and ask if this method is stipulated in the company's disciplinary procedure or are they using an 'ad hoc' approach.

He could argue that they are using that method to ensure he is dismissed because of future potential health issues.

There also seems a lot of subjective criteria being used in the selection matrix, which is not a great problem provided that it is not 'tailored to fit' other members of staff and is balanced out with objective criteria which can be easily measured.

Good luck.