I want to be made redundant!!!

CFC

stebiz wrote: »

I was planning to go self employed again at some time in the future. However there is clearly a way of doing it. If my company had been fair - cost of living wage increases, less demanding, better working conditions, it is unlikely I would have had to go off sick. I would have been able to do my job and give relevant notice in due course. However they haven't!! They have been unfair. When you know your hands are tied that really does stress you out. Being humiliated by having to ask to go to the toilet, that stresses you out. Having all your shifts changed at no notice (the contract says they don't have to) so you can't plan ahead. That is unfair!! This is when you know it is time to leave. But should I be fair??

Stebiz

Your attitude seems to me to be a bit immature, and I think that you make a poor employee. You would definitely be best suited to working for yourself. There are many sectors in which there are no pay rises for years, jobs get outsourced, where targets get raised, breaks have to be notified so they can be covered (even comfort breaks) and shifts are changed at very short notice. Hard working people with self respect do these jobs (or leave and find something else to do) rather than having such a thin skin and inflated sense of self worth that it makes them 'sick'. Your employer hasn't made you sick (there are no comments of bullying or harassment or health and safety breaches), you have made yourself 'sick' because you believe that you deserve better. In the same way you comment about 'having your hands tied really stresses you out' - what that really appears to mean in context is 'being told what to do' really stresses you out. Well, being told what to do and when to do it is a part of being employed. It is hardly fair to claim that the employer has made you sick and should pay you to compensate for it. One thing that we should all remember is that excessive sick leave payments results in reduced pay for every employee of that company.

You surely are old enough to really not equate your perceived contribution to the company to the perceived contribution of an exec. who may well get a payrise, so we'll just cast that argument aside. After all, if you have been successful in self employment you should easily be able to work out that perhaps the plan to outsource has saved the company millions, so it would not be surprising if the exec get a payrise or a payoff that reflects that.

As for your comment of 'the business acts from a business perspective, and by taking sick leave you are acting from a business perspective', that is just a self serving attempt at justification, which surely you are intelligent enough to see as the red herring that it clearly is. You are not a business contracting to an employer, you are an employee. Clearly you do not like being an employee and that is where the nub of the matter actually lies for you, I believe, rather than having 'an issue with authority' you have an 'issue with control in employment'.


I sincerely wish you all the best in your self employment and am certain you will be a great deal happier in it. I'm also certain that you are doing some manager somewhere a favour by saving some unfortunate employer from having to put up with you in the future.

And Jazzyjeff, before you say 'be nice to all moneysavers', there's a clear difference between working the system and saving money. Many people will get annoyed at those who work the system because for every one person that does, other people will suffer in the end. Therefore there is bound to be a multitude of opinions expressed, and they are not all going to be nicely phrased on what people see as a moral issue.

eco123

Several years ago I worked for a manufacturing company & one Monday morning a member of staff handed in his notice to go to a new job...

2 hours later (at lunchtime) the company announced major job losses & would anyone take voluntary redundancy. As luck would have it I was just about to change job but had not intended to hand my notice in until the following Friday. My arm shot up like a rocket & everyone laughed...but I got the last laugh because I received just short of £?0,000 in redundancy.

However, the poor guy who handed his notice in earlier that morning got nothing. They knew & would not allow him to retract his notice. He had worked for the company for many years & a darn good worker too. This shows how little some employers really care...quite legal of course... but a tad heartless!

stebiz

CFC wrote: »

There are many sectors in which there are no pay rises for years, jobs get outsourced, where targets get raised, breaks have to be notified so they can be covered (even comfort breaks) and shifts are changed at very short notice.

And that makes things right?? If people don't make a stand somewhere then you just get walked all over. We had a letter a few months back saying annual sick rate average per employee is 35 days a year. This is an average on 100 plus employees. Maybe we are all immature!!!

Taking up on some of your points. Several of my best friends in work are managers, unfortunately the top managers treat them exactly the same. I have no problem answering orders although most of my working life I have only answered to myself.

You might be right. Maybe a don't make a good employee. Maybe it will do other employers a favour if I go self employed. One thing for sure though is that I will be going self employed. I just need to sort a few things out first. I think maybe even you will agree the company at least owes me that. One thing for sure this employer is saving itself millions on redundancy pay and millions off shoring work. If that means that the executives have saved the companies millions I guess your view will be they have done their job well. Personally I think it 'stinks' and will look after No1 and my family.

Stebiz

stebiz

www.eco.im wrote: »

Several years ago I worked for a manufacturing company & one Monday morning a member of staff handed in his notice to go to a new job...

2 hours later (at lunchtime) the company announced major job losses & would anyone take voluntary redundancy. As luck would have it I was just about to change job but had not intended to hand my notice in until the following Friday. My arm shot up like a rocket & everyone laughed...but I got the last laugh because I received just short of £?0,000 in redundancy.

However, the poor guy who handed his notice in earlier that morning got nothing. They knew & would not allow him to retract his notice. He had worked for the company for many years & a darn good worker too. This shows how little some employers really care...quite legal of course... but a tad heartless!

And why doesn't that surprise me?? I'm glad you got your redundancy and do feel, like you, for the other guy. Life is tough sometimes!!

Stebiz

squashy

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

the job doesn't have to no longer exist. It's the job title that doesn't exist.
where i work they made all team managers redundant and could re-apply for a new role as 'team leader'. This, i'm pretty sure, was a dead wood clearing exercise. They got rid of the ones they didn't want to keep and employed the ones they did want to keep as team leaders. Couple of years later the role had a name change back to team manager.

Not strictly true. I was told by powerpoint presentation that my job had been "deleted" and yet I still didn't qualify for redundancy. Basically they were restructuring the whole team and shifting the roles about slightly. My job was as a finance and admin assistant but they took away the finance function altogether and called the job something else...but apparantly the job was "too similar" to the old one for the post to be deemed redundant. Therefore I was classed as "displaced" and had to reapply for my old job or a senior one.

CFC

stebiz wrote: »

We had a letter a few months back saying annual sick rate average per employee is 35 days a year. This is an average on 100 plus employees. Maybe we are all immature!!!

Taking up on some of your points. Several of my best friends in work are managers, unfortunately the top managers treat them exactly the same. I have no problem answering orders although most of my working life I have only answered to myself.

You might be right. Maybe a don't make a good employee. Maybe it will do other employers a favour if I go self employed. One thing for sure though is that I will be going self employed. I just need to sort a few things out first. I think maybe even you will agree the company at least owes me that. One thing for sure this employer is saving itself millions on redundancy pay and millions off shoring work. If that means that the executives have saved the companies millions I guess your view will be they have done their job well. Personally I think it 'stinks' and will look after No1 and my family.

Stebiz

To answer your points - if your sick rate per employee is 35 days per year it is no surprise at all that your company is going for outsourcing. That is a lunatic sick rate, and often it has a background of lax management where attendance has not been managed strictly enough. The costs are enormous, and on that figure alone the company will save money placing the business elsewhere. It emphasises the previous point ie that every person going sick impacts on other employees.

As for managers not being treated any more nicely than first level workers, I don't know why anybody would think that they are...they usually are not!

I'm still not seeing why the company owes you anything though...they've paid you for your time, and that's what being employed is about.

As for the executives having done their jobs well...I'm afraid it's true. Their job is to control costs, hence by outsourcing they have done their job well. Their duty is to the shareholders, not to the workers. But of course it is sad - believe me nobody enjoys handing out redundancies. It's traumatic all round.

ckerrd

An average of 7 weeks time off sick does seem terribly high, although a couple of long term sick employees could well bump up the average.

It does strike me that there is a great deal of mismanagement going on and as per my previous post I would expect a decent Manager or HR department to be across this to see what was the root cause.

It may be of course that the company are happy to let this happen so they can cite the sickness records as part of the reason for outsourcing.
Not necessarily a nice way to go about things but it happens.

As I said before - walk away.

I have also heard, as squashy indicated, of jobs being altered just enough to be a change for the individual but not enough to be considered redundant. Another sneaky thing to do but it does happen.

Business tend on the whole to be better at manipulating the system than an individual, but someone one person gets lucky and scores a few points and gets some reward, whether it be financial or raising of self esteem, or the respect of their colleagues. But those times are few and far between.

Time to move on.

gt-cri

"It may be of course that the company are happy to let this happen so they can cite the sickness records as part of the reason for outsourcing.
Not necessarily a nice way to go about things but it happens.

As I said before - walk away.

I have also heard, as squashy indicated, of jobs being altered just enough to be a change for the individual but not enough to be considered redundant. Another sneaky thing to do but it does happen.

Business tend on the whole to be better at manipulating the system than an individual, but someone one person gets lucky and scores a few points and gets some reward, whether it be financial or raising of self esteem, or the respect of their colleagues. But those times are few and far between."

I think that the comments above catch the essence of this discussion; that some companies are good at maximising profits/share-holder returns, at the expense of employee moral. One begets the other- poor companies employ bad workers. Consistently, workers are asked what their number-one change to their employment would be? The most popular answer is always "More say in what I do." By the sound of it, the company in question was not always like this but has become a poor employer through the changes of owners/ high staff turnover etc.

In the past, the trade-union could have helped with this, or possibly made it worse. Nowadays, the employers can "out-source" (an oxymoron if ever I heard one!) services to save money. It can also be used to undermine the ever-increasing employee-friendly employment regulations coming from (mostly) the EU.

As I said, one begets the other.

However, all money-savers are by default trying to "work" the system"! We are using a pooled knowledge to give ourselves more clout, when dealing with "big-business". We endeavour to play big-business at their own game!

To Stebiz, you have my sympathy for working for a poor employer. You also have my respect for being brave enough to post a request for what is a contentious issue. I would possibly advise contacting ACAS or at least inform them of your situation-they have numerous (free) (oops, should I mention that? Someone may try to play the system by using tax-payer's money to get a free book:p !!) publications which may offer some hope.

To the opponents of Stebiz's stance, I say what is wrong with "playing" the system- didn't it lead us all to this web-site and forum?

stebiz

CFC wrote: »

To answer your points - if your sick rate per employee is 35 days per year it is no surprise at all that your company is going for outsourcing.

It is very important to note that attendance has not always been like this. It is simply that many of the staff have had enough of being taken for granted. No wage rises - and told there will never be one. They are just waiting for people to leave and for everybody who leaves they take another one on in India. Then to rub salt in the wound they make redundant all colleagues who have been there only a short time so that they don't have to pay out redundancy!!! I really feel sorry for the customers calling this dept. because there are very few caring employees left!!

Stebiz

stebiz

squashy wrote: »

Not strictly true. I was told by powerpoint presentation that my job had been "deleted" and yet I still didn't qualify for redundancy. Basically they were restructuring the whole team and shifting the roles about slightly. My job was as a finance and admin assistant but they took away the finance function altogether and called the job something else...but apparantly the job was "too similar" to the old one for the post to be deemed redundant. Therefore I was classed as "displaced" and had to reapply for my old job or a senior one.

I've seen this go on as well. Seems common then in big business.

Stebiz