Redeployed instead of Redundancy

tower

Hi, a friend has been told that their firm needs to make 20 people redundent from their current roles( team leaders).
They are now being told that instead of redundancy these people may be redeployed to another role, but with a 11k pay cut. They have been told that their pay is protected for one year and then it would drop, is this legal?
Also they have been told if they don't take the new roles, they will have to leave will no redundancy pay. Again is this legal or are they entitled to the money?

Thanks

Turtle

As far as I know you can only be redeployed into a 'suitable' alternative role and assuming these team leaders are not earning a complete fortune then an £11k pay cut is obviously sizeable. I'm not sure that in law this would be viewed as a suitable alternative. This is just my own thoughts though, hopefully someone with actual knowledge will be along soon to help.

tower

Thanks for your reply, that is what i thought. It's not the sort of job you do for a long time, highly stressful, hence the pay. Most people have been there less than ten years so the redundancy would not be great.(think it's 1 week per year). If it goes that way, i think most will work the year while job hunting, then leave.

lucylucky

If a post is being made redundant then the post holder may well be offered suitable alternative employment in order to keep them in a job.

However if it is not a "suitable alternative" then the post holder no longer has a job and goes trough the redundancy process.

A drop of £11k is hard to argue as a suitable alternative.

A word to a Union rep/ACAS or employment lawyer would be well worth it.

anamenottaken

lucylucky wrote: »

A drop of £11k is hard to argue as a suitable alternative.
/QUOTE]
There is also the "problem" that the pay is protected for a year and therefore the job they would be offered is not an immediate £11K cut.

lucylucky

http://www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=877&p=0

Useful read above.

Which includes this interesting bit "It is up to the employee to decide
whether the alternative work is suitable."

WhiteHorse

Stay on, but use the job simply to pay the bills and to fund jobhunting. Bear in mind too that they're probably not done yet - even the 'new' post probably won't last.

-BA-

WhiteHorse wrote: »

Stay on, but use the job simply to pay the bills and to fund jobhunting. Bear in mind too that they're probably not done yet - even the 'new' post probably won't last.

And if you do stay on make sure they don't omit continuity of service in case you face the same situation in 12 months time.

MrRedundant

I would say if the job counts as a similar role you'd be forced to stay until such a time the pay reduced and it wasnt a suitable alternative. I'd ensure it is written in that you only accept the redeployment whilst it remains a similar job and that at such a time this changes you will reject the role and consider yourself redundant unless other alternatives are found and see what they say.

what they currently propose is not acceptable unless they are willing to accept once the paycut kicks in your redundant. I suspect there plan is to get as many as possible to accept the change then tell the rest its a year and hope they shed them in that time so the eventual redundancies are a lot lower. Most effected would be looking for new jobs.