Redundancy, Retention & Furlough

ldoodle

DH company site was given notice to close as a result of last lockdown and followed a redundancy process.  A number of employees were asked to remain on a retention package with varying end dates to provide business continuity and handover to other sites and signed contracts to this effect.  The company is now trying to furlough some of these staff as work is slow and the handovers are on hold due to travel restrictions etc.  Is this even ethical of the company?  Surely the job retention/furlough scheme is to try to prevent redundancies and not to just reduce the company's costs and employees salaries when they are already loosing their jobs? Would be interested in others viewpoint.  Many thanks

Jeremy535897

I think this time round it is more about preserving incomes, at least for the CJRS extension, otherwise they would have stuck with the job support scheme.

epm-84

What sort of site? Travel for work related purposes is allowed within the new lockdown regulations.

It's probably not against the law to furlough them but yes furlough is intended to protect jobs so it might not be within the spirit of the scheme.

Tyton01

Jeremy535897 said:

I think this time round it is more about preserving incomes, at least for the CJRS extension, otherwise they would have stuck with the job support scheme.

Spot on. The viable jobs statement by the chancellor that was previously mentioned to save jobs by furlough  has gone out the window. But I never totally agreed with statement in first place as most jobs in a lot of sectors would be viable if virus was not around. Will be interesting to see what happens at end of this short furlough . I feel they will have to  extend again. On the travel situation.   Is it OK for a group of workers to  travel in the same mini bus together,  to get to another work place ? or is this breaking rules.