Redundancy during maternity leave now offered a compromise agreement

bettyboo1923

Could anybody offer any advice please.

my daughter-in-law works for the city council. went on maternity leave 20.9.2009 due to return to work in september 2010.

in feb 2010 she was told she was being made redundant. her job was not advertised as maternity leave cover and the cc took on 1 and 'half' people. these 2 are still working. the cc didn't ask for volunteers, just went straight to d-in-l as the person to be made redundant

in march she received 8 weeks notice termination of employment altho' they told her that the redundancy would commence on the day she would have returned to work in september. she has not received any redundancy pay and has now been asked to attend a meeting to discuss either mandatory redundancy or voluntary with a compromise agreement.

she doesn't want to go back to work for them now anyway but is unsure if she has good grounds to take them to tribunal.

any thoughts on how much more she could receive as a compromise agreement with voluntary redundancy rather than do down the route of tribunal

many thanks

SarEl

Sorry but no - voluntary is voluntary and there are no rules, so it's all negotiable. How negotable it is depends on how tough a negotator she is and whether the council have screwed up (which they may have done - making someone redundant in these circumstances isn't easy). She cannot have a compromise agreement with proper advice either from a union or a solicitor, so I believe her best move would be to consult now, get advice on whether the council have acted within the law here, and let the union or solicitor do the work of negotiating based on that.

bettyboo1923

Thank you.

can she do it the other way around - have the meeting with them for them to outline the voluntary redundancy with compromise agreement and then when she sees a solicitor - which she has to do and paid for by the employer - go back to them with her answer and start negotiating then.