Please share your thoughts.

bconnelly

I work as a service manager for an IT company based in Edinburgh with it's head office in NE England. A couple of months ago we bought over a competitor, also in the NE who pretty much mirrored the services we provide. Today we were told that the entire Edinburgh team are being made redundant and the team from the recently acquired company were taking over our jobs. There was no consultation and no opportunity for the Edinburgh team to challenge the decision. Is this legal?


On a personal level, I have more than 2 years service but my job is going to someone in the NE who's essentially been with us about 2 months.


Any advice would be appreciated.


Thanks.


BC

asajj

Collective consultation rules must be followed, if they’re making 20 or more employees redundant within any 90-day period at a single establishment. How many people are affected?

getmore4less

How many people?

There could be a case to pool the jobs.

How many would even consider relocating with no financial assistance.

Had they tried to relocate people before?

Looks like the plan was to do this from the start.

It could be that many in that company have long service so could be more expensive to terminate.

bconnelly

It's a bit complicated. I believe that management have had this in mind since the takeover negotiations started about a year ago. My team has dwindled from 11 down to 6 in that period with management refusal to replace heads as people left a deliberately created, stressful environment (souring the milk). As of today, the 6 remaining staff have been made redundant. The crazy thing is that the team in the NE came with there own customers and are at capacity, there is no way they can take on our customers too, so soon after the takeover. Even if they had the capacity, they've had no training. That said, there are 8 shiny new jobs now being advertised in the NE that are well within the capabilities of our engineers, but 200 miles away. In such a volatile environment, with below average salaries and no relocation help, no one would consider moving south.