Waiting for operation so my emloyer has made me redundant

nashly

Six weeks ago I started getting knee pain so I went to see my doctor who confirmed that it was a reoccurance of an injury I had two years previously, when it was scanned 2 years ago it showed bone wear and cartilidge damage but the physio I received then helped me recover in a couple of weeks so I could get back to work as a driver/glazer/service engineer covering the southern half of the UK.
This time the injury is a lot more painfull and physio and my doctor think I need an operation to assess what course of action to take.
I had been sending in fitness for work forms to my employer every two weeks as I do not know the recovery time with or without an operation.
On my last visit to my doctors the pain had increased and he signed me off work until 4th January 2011, I faxed the form to my employers and within a couple of hours had an email back saying they had recieved the form and could I come to a meeting in the branch nearest to where I live the following week to discuss remedial jobs coming up.
I attended the meeting and was told because service jobs were getting less in quantity that only one engineer was required to cover the whole of the UK so I was going to be made redundant, I was shocked because they were booking jobs ahead of me when I was signing off every two weeks as they informed me by email that was the plan and keep them updated which I did weekly, they had within the last couple of months provided me with a brand new lease van and ordered new uniforms as well !

I know you can be made redundant whilst on sick leave but can you be made redundant because you are temporarily unable to work ?

I am annoyed at my employer as I have given over 8 years loyalty to them turning down two other job offers in that time.

p00hsticks

nashly wrote: »

I know you can be made redundant whilst on sick leave but can you be made redundant because you are temporarily unable to work ?

I suppose that if they are managing OK without you then that might indicate that probably there isn't enough work to go around the current workforce and so perhaps SOMEONE could be made redundant - but I don't see that that person necessarily has to be you...

It sounds from your description that curently there is more than one person doing the same job, and your employer is saying they only need one person - in which case I think they need to decide on some fair criteria that they are going to use to determine which of you is going to be kept on and whcih is going to be made redundant, and notify you of what those are.

I'm not an expert but I susect that the fact that you are off sick at the moment isn't a proper criteria, although looking at a persons sickness record over a long period of time might be...

nashly

Thanks for your reply.

McKneff

Not an expert by any means but think about it.

two of you in the pool, they are hardly going to make the other one redundant, knowing you are off sick/going to be off sick for an undetermined tim then they end up with no engineer at all. Thats only my commense sense opinion.

They will make the criteria fit but if I was you I would ring ACAS up and get their slant on it