Access to my marked selection matrix

chirpy10

I am 36 weeks pregnant and I received a letter last Friday to say I was invited for an individual consultation meeting as my post was at risk of redundancy, we had been told several weeks before that due to public sector cuts our company was going to have to make mass redundancies, my individual consultation meeting was scheduled for this Wed just gone. I have postponed meeting till next Tuesday using a sicknote from the doctor as my reason. It was also to give me time to prepare for meeting. I have asked for my scored matrix aswell as all my supervision notes, pregancy risk assessment meetings aswell as management meetings (as I believe that there has been some underhand dealings where people were brought acrss from other depts to take on a role that were going to be allocated to me as my project had finished but it was then not given to me due to my forthcoming maternity leave) prior to my meeting and my HR dept have not said no to this but after a series of phone calls my matrix and info have still not turned up. What I want to know is?

Do I have a right to see scored matrix prior to my individual consultation meeting as it doesnt seem fair to go in 'blind'? Do I have a right to postpone meeting if I dont receive info. The compnay are very keen to get redundancies over with due to costs involved.

Also, do I have a case based on my materity rights, I have a very strong belief that roles were created for 2 people who were facing redundancy in another area, my team leader had said that I was going to get role as my project finished then all of a sudden these 2 people apperared and I was given 3 roles which were were not very substantial?

Also, my individual consultation meeting is on Tuesday, I am due to start my maternity leave the day after, does this change my rights in any way, i.e if they dont make me redundant before my maternity date will they have to then pay me enhanced maternity leave, which I would have recieved had I remained in employment.

What doesnt make sense to me is that the company are just making cuts to survive till April, when they will hear about new funding ( I am due to return to work in April). It is going to cost them far more to make me redundant than to keep me on and pay me my maternity pay as I have been there 9 years and they are paying enhanced redundancy. Why would they do that?

I no longer want to work there so am wary about appealing as I dont want my job back, I would like to take them to tribuanl though. Any advice very welcome x

SarEl

You don't have any choice about appealing - if you don't appeal and go to a tribunal, they will send you back to appeal! You either have to claim that this is an unfair selection for redundancy - or you have to accept the redundancy and forget it. And if you claim it to be unfair selection you must make your case for that first, in full, to the employer, via an appeal. Which you may, of course, win. In which case you will have to return to work, which you do not want to do - there are no grounds to have the appeal and win it and then make a claim!

It is hard to make someone redundant if they are preganant and have actually started their maternity leave, because at that point there are rights to return to the job or a similar job if this is not possible. But those rights do not apply before the maternity leave starts. Have they actually already informed you that you have been selected for redundancy and issued the redundancy notice?

However, I do not think you have much grounds to delay the meeting simply on the basis that you haven't received the scoring matrix. Yes they should provide it, but there are no legal rules as to when they should provide it. If you are unfit to attend that would be grounds to delay the meeting - but they could still make you redundant if you do not attend. Whether this would impact on any defence they may have would depends on the circumstances and how good their lawyers are.

My advice would have been to seek legal advice, but you have left it a little late to do so before the meeting now. However, I think you should get legal advice as soon as you can

minihaha

Hi Chirpy 10

It may be worth taking things one step at a time. It may be that the people recently moved into your area is not an indication that you are going to be made redundant and that they are considering the cover of your maternity absence instead.

See what is covered in your consultation meeting. They should provide your selection scoring then, or arrange a follow-up meeting for this to be communicated. Hopefully your company will have already provided written details of the process that will be followed. Take this to your meeting and make sure they deliver against all your expectations from this. There should be a period that follows your consultation meeting before any redundancies are announced. This will give you time to consider everything that has been communicated to you, the level of risk of redundancy you face and whether you need to request more information and any follow-up meetings.

You are considering the appeal process before you have all the information. Not sure if you are feeling that you don’t want to work there any more because it is time for something different and the timing is right, or if it is a reaction to feeling that they are going to make you redundant and you wouldn’t want to work there again if effectively told that they didn’t value you enough to keep you. The latter I would fully understand and I also consider the appeal process is a bit of a sham, as too much damage may have been done by that point. But some will benefit from the process and could remain in much needed employment by following it. I myself pursued a tribunal claim without appealing my selection for redundancy. But for me I couldn’t submit an appeal against any scoring (even if I’d wanted to) because my ex-employer would not provide my scoring, although it had been requested on a number of occasions and through a number of people, including the MD and people in the HR department. Basically I’d had my ‘at risk meeting’ and pushed out of the door, which was then bolted securely. I did eventually get my scores, though, but about 2.5 months after the event.

I would suggest you log everything that happens during the whole process, including observations and people’s comments- it may or may not be of use at a later date.
I would also mention that the tribunal path is a very stressful and possibly isolated process that doesn’t always deliver the level of closure that is needed.