Planned removal of the older workers

greene14

Hi, We work in a situation where it would be preferable from the employers and the clients perspective if my area of the workforce are each less than 50, for appearance and perceived currency in the role.
I suspect my company may be looking to over-employ in my role, using a busy period to justify new positions, to then scale back when less busy, using this to make the older members of my team, myself included, redundant in the near future in order to fulfil this. 
I've seen the relevant redundancy procedures and potential payouts and complaint procedures etc on the .Gov website but is there anything I can do to prevent or preclude this from happening please??

Andy_L

Draw their attention to
https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/being-selected-for-redundancy

"You cannot be selected for the following reasons - your redundancy would be classed as an unfair dismissal:...

• age"

YBR

They cannot openly select for redundancy on the basis of age, since it's a protected charactoristic. OTOH it is usually possible to come up with critera which add up to the same. I have seen it done the other way round when all the posts for less experienced staff were the ones made redundant. Less experienced = younger, almost inevitably.

You might consider that the best response is to start looking for roles elsewhere ahead of the crowd.

toby3210

Unfair dismissal and discrimination. Forget it, it won't cut it.

Grumpy_chap

greene14 said:

Hi, We work in a situation where it would be preferable from the employers and the clients perspective if my area of the workforce are each less than 50, for appearance and perceived currency in the role.
I suspect my company may be looking to over-employ in my role, using a busy period to justify new positions, to then scale back when less busy, using this to make the older members of my team, myself included, redundant in the near future in order to fulfil this. 
I've seen the relevant redundancy procedures and potential payouts and complaint procedures etc on the .Gov website but is there anything I can do to prevent or preclude this from happening please??

You can' t be (openly) selected for redundancy because of age, but this post reads a bit odd in the aggregate because you seem to suggest and accept in the opening line that being under 50 is meritous.

What is the role and why is being young beneficial in the role?
It may be that there is some genuine metric that the employer could apply which achieves the clear out of the older workers but not fall foul of discrimination rules.  (I am not sure to what extent, if any, secondary parameters that have a discriminatory effect still count as protected characteristics.)