Reemployed and furloughed following redundancy

Georgie80

Hi

Not sure if anyone else is/was in the same situation as us, or if anything can be done about it now…

My husband was made redundant 29/02/20. He had been employed by the company for almost 20 years. A few weeks later we went into lockdown and any job prospects dried up. We heard about the government scheme allowing people who had been made redundant on or after 28/02/20 to be reemployed by their previous employer who could then claim furlough for them. We contacted the employer who refused to help. They sent the following email…

Hi ****

 

I’m writing in response to your request to re-join **** to take advantage of the Government Job Retention Scheme (‘furlough’ initiative).

 

I’m sorry that it’s taken some time to get back to you with a decision.

 

Furlough has been established to support organisations to retain their employees who would otherwise have been made redundant as a consequence of the current Covid-19 crisis.  Your redundancy from **** was not related to the Covid-19 crisis.

 

Our focus, and commitment to our people, is on ensuring we continue to run a responsible business, both protecting the wellbeing of our people as well as the future health of our business.

 

As an organisation we have reviewed the detail of the Government scheme, and at this stage, following consideration of all factors, we do not believe it to be appropriate to apply for public funds under this Job Retention Scheme in order to support the payment, or retention, of any of our people.

 

Therefore, unfortunately, it would be equally inappropriate for us to do so for ex-employees who left *** for reasons not directly related to the Covid-19 crisis.  We believe to do so would be against the spirit and intention of the HMRC scheme.

 

I hope that, although not what you were hoping to hear, you can understand the reasons why we are unable to grant your request.

 

Regards

 

****

Did anyone else get a similar response from their previous employer back then!? Or did anyone actually have any success? 

We found the following information online about the scheme which doesn’t quite match up with the company’s reasons for refusing…

[Your employer would have been eligible to re-employ you and place you on furlough as long as they did this by 10 June. They will still be able to claim a grant to cover part of your regular wages from the date you were placed on furlough, up to a cap of £2,500 a month. This applies if you were made redundant or stopped working for them on or after 28 February 2020, even if they did not re-employ you until after 19 March 2020.]

[‘Furloughing is better for employees than redundancy or unpaid leave. Employers aren’t doing wrong by furloughing, they’re doing right. The government’s aim is to ‘protect financial victims of coronavirus’ and ‘enable firms and employees to quickly pick up where they were, once this all ends’. So if employees need furloughing, employers should try to furlough them.’]

[‘If staff left after 28 Feb for redundancy or a new job, they can be rehired and furloughed. Employees on the payroll on 28 Feb can be rehired to be furloughed, providing the reason they don’t have income now is an economic knock-on effect of coronavirus’]

["For that to work well, we need employers to take on a moral duty to deliver these responsibilities for the betterment of individuals and the economy. If they re-recuit someone and furlough them, they can put them on 80% of salary, and the state pays all that salary, plus national insurance and any pension contribution. There's no cost to the firm, though there may be a short-term cash flow issue.”]

Jeremy535897

People were re-hired under these rules, but it was entirely at the option of the ex-employer. Had they re-employed everyone but your husband, you might have sought some sort of redress, but the only mechanism to do that would have been an employment tribunal, and the time limit for making an approach to an employment tribunal expired a long time ago.

sheramber

The government’s aim is to ‘protect financial victims of coronavirus’ and ‘enable firms and employees to quickly pick up where they were, once this all ends’.

Does that not imply that the employee would continue to work for the employer after furlough ended.

Jeremy535897

sheramber said:

The government’s aim is to ‘protect financial victims of coronavirus’ and ‘enable firms and employees to quickly pick up where they were, once this all ends’.

Does that not imply that the employee would continue to work for the employer after furlough ended.

This was one of those situations where people complained that they had been made redundant or just changed jobs at exactly the wrong time, so that the new employer couldn't furlough them (as they started too late) and the old one couldn't either because they no longer worked for it. The government bowed to pressure and allowed the rehiring by the old employer to qualify for furlough, despite it clearly having nothing to do with saving jobs.

Georgie80

sheramber said:

The government’s aim is to ‘protect financial victims of coronavirus’ and ‘enable firms and employees to quickly pick up where they were, once this all ends’.

Does that not imply that the employee would continue to work for the employer after furlough ended.

I understood it to mean that it would put people back in the position they would be if lock down didn’t happen - ie. no worse off financially and able to now find work (not necessarily with the employer that made them redundant in the first place)…everyone reads things so differently don’t they!?