A redundancy question.

Like you said you need to check your contract. There is a lot of good stuff on acas, I have been looking myself as I think H's work have breached his contract.

My husband has just been through something similar.

His work decided that they needed to make some one redundant, his colleague was on maternity leave and he was told that basically if she wanted the job it was hers (don't get me started on how unfair that is).

However she wanted to come back part time but the job was full time. His work had to see if they could find some one to do the other hours. They couldn't find anyone so told her that she would need to work full time or leave.

Initially she said she would leave, but has since changed her mind and is taking them to a tribunal (not sure on what grounds tbh).

However, my husband does get to keep his job - hurrah!

I think you can choose redundancy as they would be effectively changing your job. I gather you would want to made redundant?

It depends on whether it could be considered a suitable alternative job. e.g. if the other office is within reasonable travelling distance and the role (and salary, benefits) are comparable to your other one. If so, your company are within their rights (to a degree) to offer you the revised position and not offer you redundancy. In which case if you didn't want to take it, you would in effect be resigning (simplistically).

Thanks for the replies. I don't want to be made redundant. But the travelling expenses would be more than triple a month (just going on a rough estimate) to go to this other office.

I would need to take it, if that was the choice, I suppose. Time will tell, not long until April.

I would say that wouldn't be a suitable alternative then. However, we pay additional travelling costs for a set period (usually 18 months) for employees that have accepted another role at a different site under a redundancy scernario - your employer might too, so don't be too despondent! Fingers crossed for you.

Thanks Strega. There is a partners meeting tomorrow so maybe something will be sorted. but doubt anything will get said until April time. Which doesn't leave me a lot of time to get anything sorted.

From my knowledge on the legality of this, the company are on dangerous ground. They need to make a compelling argument about the business reasons for this decision to avoid European law.

It's positive discrimination in the favour of the pregnant woman. On the face of it, it's unfair, but as someone who is 33 weeks pregnant, if I were to be made redundant, I'd be almost unemployable at the moment, whereas the same couldn't necessarily be said of a man occupying the same role.

I found out that my role has gone for sure and that my company has a "strong will" to redeploy me, and I'll get first refusal over anything suitable. Thank God. There's no way I'd get past interview at the moment, and even if I got a new job, there would likely be an expectation that I'd have to start shortly, which would leave me with almost no mat leave at all, and would have to throw myself into a new role with a tiny baby to deal with. It might not seem fair to your husband and I'm sorry he's going through this, but he's far more employable than his female opposite number.