Redundancy notice but consultants are still doing my job

FixedIncome

I have just received my notice of redundancy but I think that my dismissal may be unfair as there are still external workers doing my job. My employer is a very large and well known British company and this is my first job in the UK so I am not familiar with how these kinds of things work here.

Note when i say workers/consultants doing my job: they are employees working for indian companies which are partners of my employer. While most of them work offshore, a few, for critical projects, are sent to work onsite with a local british contract through their partner. That is a very common practice in the industry.

This is a summary of the events:

1. more than one year ago the company communicated the plan for a large reorganization and as result they made  many employees redundant, including me, all of them are IT technical roles planned to be moved to India;

2. I went through the conversation process and I raised a counter proposal saying that there are still workers (from the third indian partners) onsite  doing  my same job while we all know that instead the employer has to make the position redundant in the organization.

3. In their answer they said that those workers would eventually be moved to India so, considering they will be doing the job offshore, my position would be redundant in the UK and my claim not valid

4. The redundancy was delayed till now as I have worked for an important project during last year

5. Last week I received the official notice of redundancy, however those workers are still doing my job onsite and that makes me wonder whether my dismissal is fair.

So now if I raise my complaint again, I am 100% sure that I would receive the same answer, saying the contracts of those workers are set to end by my last day (BTW none of them has received this communication). However in my view this answer would just state an intention, not a fact, and the fairness of the redundancy should be evaluated as the things stand at the moment the notice is raised, so now. This is the point where I am asking for some advice, please can you share your view?

My objective is not to keep my job (as the reorganization already completed would make my life very difficult) but negotiate a higher redundancy pay or have another job in the company. By the way, the redundancy pay is 3.5 week/year, so I think it's in the high range for the UK standards.

Thanks!

 

 

Thrugelmir

FixedIncome said:

My objective is not to keep my job (as the reorganization already completed would make my life very difficult) but negotiate a higher redundancy pay or have another job in the company.

 

The Company is under no obligation to offer you anything other than the statutory minimium. I wouldn't expect them to negotiate. 

If there are alternative roles the Company has an obligation to offer these to you to apply for.  

MalMonroe

You could contact Acas for advice. 

https://www.acas.org.uk/contact

Redundancy usually comes when an employer doesn't need a particular job to be done any more. So the fact that others are still doing the work you did does raise questions. 

Acas may even recommend going to an Employment Tribunal but do contact them first, to see what they advise.  

General_Grant

MalMonroe said:

You could contact Acas for advice. 

https://www.acas.org.uk/contact

Redundancy usually comes when an employer doesn't need a particular job to be done any more. So the fact that others are still doing the work you did does raise questions. 

Acas may even recommend going to an Employment Tribunal but do contact them first, to see what they advise.  

But an employer may need fewer people to do the work - that's a redundancy situation too. 
In fact someone can still be dismissed on the grounds of redundancy even if they were the only person doing that role but another employee is moved round to do it ("bumping").

Undervalued

MalMonroe said:

You could contact Acas for advice. 

https://www.acas.org.uk/contact

Redundancy usually comes when an employer doesn't need a particular job to be done any more. So the fact that others are still doing the work you did does raise questions. 

Acas may even recommend going to an Employment Tribunal but do contact them first, to see what they advise.  

Outsourcing the work to another company (i.e. "consultants") can be a perfectly lawful reason for redundancy.

happyc84

Don't fight it, the company may change their mind and keep you on.