Made Redundant while on furlough- unfair dismissal

sammielb

Hi
My very first post here goes.... Ive been made redundant while on furlough, my official last day is Wednesday. I'm appealing the decision. My role still exists as someone who covers me when i'm off on holiday/ill is doing my job from home along with a small portion of there own job. At the start of the pandemic i was refused to be able to work from home as i have a 4year old who was home due to nursery closure. The person now doing my job from home does not have children. Is this grounds for the company being unfair and discriminating because i'm a parent? I know a lot of people who are juggling childcare and working from home. A scoring criteria was carried out to select people fairly (13people in the company were made redundant) The same criteria has been used for all staff across all departments however am i allowed to make my employer aware that i have seen the scores of those staff members who have also been chosen for redundancy? as there is a clear flaw with the maximum scores that have been set, they differ so much, we all feel this has been done in order for us who have been selected to fall lower in the scoring hence resulting in being selected for redundancy. Hope this makes sense, any help would be much appreciated

[Deleted User]

First, how long have you been employed there? If less than two years you have virtually no rights anyway. 
Second the test is not that the process appears "unfair" to you, but that it is unreasonable and deliberately biased. 
Third, how did you obtain access to the scoring in relation to yourself and others? If this was information distributed to all then that is fine, if you accessed information that you should not have accessed then that could potentially be gross misconduct. 

The reality of it is that many people are going to be made redundant and that you might have a case for unfair dismissal, you might not, however in the current economic climate it is very easy to justify redundancies and very hard to prove that they are "unfair".

sammielb said:

My role still exists as someone who covers me when i'm off on holiday/ill is doing my job from home along with a small portion of there own job. 

It does not sound like your role exists, there is a difference between the work involved in a role and the role itself. If that person is now doing the work you did, with it having been rolled into their job role then your role does not still exist. It can get rather complicated, but unless they have given the other person your job role it it's entirety and they are no longer doing their previous role then you might find that this is in fact a "new" role which they occupy. 

A claim of "unfair dismissal" when a redundancy consultation process has taken place is a very difficult one to win, even more so when it was not just one person, but multiple people made redundant as you have indicated. If you feel you have a genuine case then I would recommend speaking to Citizen's Advice with all the documentation relating to your redundancy that you (legally) have in your possession and they can advise you if there is a chance of success.

jayzor

I’m afraid you aren’t going to get the answers you want to hear. You should start looking for another job. Look at universal credit in the short term if required.

poppy12345

jayzor said:

I’m afraid you aren’t going to get the answers you want to hear.

Why not? There are some extremely knowledgeable people here on the forum.

bradders1983

You flat out refused to work from home because you have a 4 year old at home? This is a very defeatist attitude sorry to say, all my colleagues are working at home with children.

Carrot007

bradders1983 said:

You flat out refused to work from home because you have a 4 year old at home? This is a very defeatist attitude sorry to say, all my colleagues are working at home with children.

The OP said that work refused due to having a kid at home. Not the way round you read it.

unforeseen

No, op was refused the option of working from home because they had a 4 year old at home. 
Employers consider quite rightly that work and childcare do not mix.
By the op telling the employer that they wanted to work from home because they had a 4 year old who couldn't go to nursery so needed care was clearly telling the employer that work would take 2nd place in priorities. The decision to refuse this was therefore understandable.
OP was on furlough looking after their child while the employer found that their work could be incorporated into another workers workload and OP wasn't really needed. 

bradders1983

Carrot007 said:

bradders1983 said:

You flat out refused to work from home because you have a 4 year old at home? This is a very defeatist attitude sorry to say, all my colleagues are working at home with children.

The OP said that work refused due to having a kid at home. Not the way round you read it.

Ah i see 🤦‍♂️

sharpe106

What grounds are you appealing to on?

Loanranger21

Being a parent is not one of the nine protected characteristics so you cannot claim unfair dismissal on discrimination grounds. Go the gov.uk website for the complete list, it includes disability, sex, etc but not parenthood. 
The big question as others have said is the length of your employment,  if less than two years you will struggle.

jayzor

poppy12345 said:

jayzor said:

I’m afraid you aren’t going to get the answers you want to hear.

Why not? There are some extremely knowledgeable people here on the forum.

I never said there wasn’t my point is she has no leg to stand on in terms of unfair dismissal based on the original post.