Seconded for 4 years now facing Redundancy

arthurx1234

I work for a local council.
4 years ago I was seconded to a new job, I along with lots of others have been told that out of the 10 people doing this job only 3 are needed and that 7 of us face redundancy.
Where do i stand as i have never been made permenant in this new seconded post?
cheers
AS

fluffy70

If you are still officially on secondment and have not received a contract to state that this is now your permanent role - you should be returned to your original post (if it still exists). Therefore you would not face redundancy if your original post is not being made redundant (always the job and not the person)
However, hopefully someone like SarEl will come on and advise if there is a custom and practice rule affecting such an ongoing secondment

KiKi

fluffy70 wrote: »

However, hopefully someone like SarEl will come on and advise if there is a custom and practice rule affecting such an ongoing secondment

Unfortunately as SarEl has left the forum that's unlikely. Hopefully Jarndyce or LazyDaisy might know, though.

KiKi

getmore4less

You could start with my secondment is ending I want my old job back.

Problem is you might end up in a redundancy pool if someone else is doing your old job.

Weigh up the options before jumping in.

London18

THis is quite common and a bit of an HR nightmare! The first thing is decide what is potentially the best outcome for you. Do you want your old job back? Is that job also affected by the restructuring? Which job is probably more secure? Here are your options:
1) if old job exists and is not affected by restructuring and you want it, put forward the argument that it should be your substantive post and so you are taken 'out of scope' of the restructuring and no longer face redundancy. Really consider how you will feel going back to the old role after all this time (is it a lower grade/salary/less interesting etc)
2) if your old job (or a suitable alternative to it) no longer exists then your seconded role is now your substative post, end of story (you have grounds for arguing that if they disestablished the old job you should have been consulted with then about that and in effect you have already been made redundant from that job & redeployed permanently to the seconded post)
3) if the old job does still exists but you prefer to have the secondment as your substative role then (and take your chances on getting a job through the selection process) then you can argue that 4 years is too long for a 'secondment' to be considered temporary. You could try pointing out that for fixed term contracts after 4 years contractors (which you aren't BTW) have a claim to a perm role - though this is just an additional argument so don't get hung up on it.
4) assuming the secondment is now your substative post you should be treated the same as people in it 'permanently' in terms of selction etc

I also suggest you look carefully at the proposed selection process and make submissions on that if you have any concerns or suggestions to improve it (and your own chances of geting through it successful.

Good luck

LittleVoice

London18 wrote: »

3) if the old job does still exists but you prefer to have the secondment as your substative role then (and take your chances on getting a job through the selection process) then you can argue that 4 years is too long for a 'secondment' to be considered temporary. You could try pointing out that for fixed term contracts after 4 years contractors (which you aren't BTW) have a claim to a perm role - though this is just an additional argument so don't get hung up on it.

But that's not a right to be a "permanent", only to request.

London18

True LittleVoice, though obviously it was brought in to stop constant rolling over of short term contracts when there is clearly a perm role there. So many 'requests' after 4 years should be agreed unless there are is a solid business case not to. Not sure how many there are these days anyway with the Regs as they are.

I did try to say it was not directly relevant to the OP's situation and not to get hung up on it. It's just that pointing out 'if I was a fixed term contractor then at this stage I could have argued I should be perm' might have some additional sway with decision makers. Local authorities are often quite wary & risk averse in terms of long secondments and redundancy so it's worth a try if that is what the OP wants.