Being laid off

the_divine_miss_r

A bit of background

Small group of staff.

One FT employee with 25+ years service - but doesn't work very hard and is an expert task dodger.

One FT employee 4 years service

One FT employee 2 years service

One PT employee- just under 2 years service. Extremely hard worker does the job of at least 2 of the above.

Two employees to be " let go" . Company chooses a "last in first out" policy and pay off the 2 last people on the above list .

PT employee joined from a FT job elsewhere at the request of a senior manager who is no longer employed by company. - no indication that the post would be temporary or seasonal.

A few questions please - is last in first out acceptable selection process.
Do either of the 2 people being let go, have any legal redress.
What would happen to company pension contributions made by the employees in the time since they began working there.

And lastly, ref income tax - is income tax paid on a rolling month-month or week-week basis. For example is I.T worked out at a rate assuming that the employee would be working from April to April ? and therefore if employee was terminated in January, would it be likely they would be enititled to a refund.

Both terminated employees have been lucky enough to secure new employment.

Thanks for reading.

Jarndyce

LIFO is now widely discredited as discriminatory and so likely to be unlawful if used as the sole criteria. So yes, the two selected on that basis may well have a claim for sex and/or age discrimination. Your comments on the relative merits, and the PT/FT status of the individuals are irrelevant, save that the PT person may as well claim for discrimination on those grounds as well.

Pensions are normally frozen at the point someone leaves the scheme, but that depends on what type of scheme it is - you'll need to check that with the pension scheme managers.

And tax-wise you have an annual allowance. You are taxed on the assumption you will work all year and earn more than that allowance, so if you do not, then yes you should get a refund.