My employer has refused my application for voluntary redundancy... 1 July 2020 at 9:33AM in Redundancy & redundancy planning 9 replies 3.4K views

THOPPER

Hello everyone. 
I have been trying to understand the situation and getting in touch with citizen's advice and other channels that can help me and I thought of publishing a note here since there might be some comment to this post that can be helpful. My employer has asked us employees to make a decision wether we accept a permanent change to our contracts (70% pay and less working hours to correspond to that) or to submit our application for voluntary redundancy. Due to financial reasons, I cannot accept the new contract so I submitted my application which was refused without explanation. What are my options? I will refuse the contract change so will have give them reason to make me redundant (a compulsory redundancy) or will they have me working at 100% hours & pay. 

Release this might be a difficult question to ask here, but any help is welcomed, specially because I know there might be people have might have been in a similar situation. 
Thank you all. 

[Deleted User]

 If your post is essential to them they won't make you redundant nor are they forced to simply because they asked for volunteers 

sharpe106

It was probably refused as they still want you as above or your position anyway. So your options now are to either accept the new pay or refuse to accept the new contract.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/basic-rights-and-contracts/changes-to-employment-contracts-overview/
https://www.acas.org.uk/changing-an-employment-contract

THOPPER

I appreciate it. I have a colleague in the same position and he justified not being able to accept the contract due to having financial obligations and children and they have now allocated him a new schedule to work where he is going to be working only 1 day per week and thus making less money then others who have accept the contract and are working 3 or 4 days a week.

[Deleted User]

 The children probably persuaded them for his case. Do you have kids? If so you can also ask for more flexible working. 

Undervalued

So called voluntary redundancy doesn't actually exist despite it being a common term!
If your position is genuinely redundant then you can be sent on your way just by paying the statutory required amounts.
Anything else is a mutually agreed separation, which is entirely a matter for negotiation. Until it is agreed, signed and sealed either party can pull out.

If you can't reach agreement and they impose then new terms, your only options are to either accept (which you will do by default if you do not positively reject them). Or you resign and claim unfair dismissal and it will be for a tribunal to decide if the new terms were reasonable or not. If you win you will get some compensation which may be more, but could be less than even statutory redundancy.

getmore4less

THOPPER said:

I appreciate it. I have a colleague in the same position and he justified not being able to accept the contract due to having financial obligations and children and they have now allocated him a new schedule to work where he is going to be working only 1 day per week and thus making less money then others who have accept the contract and are working 3 or 4 days a week.

Do the current contracts allow for variable hours?

THOPPER

Hello everyone. Apologise for not being able to write before. So, our contracts are currently set for 42.5 hours. However it does not say anything about variable hours. 

THOPPER

Regarding my colleagues' situation with the children, he was told that even though they understood his problem with childcare that unfortunately it was not his choice to be furloughed or to request to be furloughed until the end of October since the company said from August onwards they have to start contributing monetarily and thus they require a minimum amount of working hours (in his and my case both 1 day a week). 

LittleVoice

_shel said:

 The children probably persuaded them for his case. Do you have kids? If so you can also ask for more flexible working. 

So the employer then gave them just 1 day a week?  What sort of persuasion was that?