So, everyone in my department is now at the risk of redundancy. However, one member is on maternaty leave. Some people think this affords her protection. Is this the case? Who knows for certain?

TUC website should be able to tell you

And from memory she can’t be made redundant while on mat leave.

Teh search function works well
http://www.tuc.org.uk/

No protection, if her job is gone, she is gone. They cannot make her job redundant because of the maternity, nor use it in deciding who to select from a pool.

Cheers for that. Not goods news though. So despite her not being very good at the job she gets to keep it over those who do a better job? And better still, she’s not there to do the job so the few that are left have to do her share on top of the increase due to the redundancies!

Woohoo!

It’s seven people chasing four jobs but if everyone was ranked on performance, she would be in the bottom half. However, if her position bumps her up the list, someone more deserving misses out. Doesn’t seem right no me.

There is a get out clause that they have to offered any alternative jobs if there are any, but can’t see why there would be any if they have got to the stage of redundancies.

No protection in maternity.
It’s the job that’s being made redundant, not her personally. Being on maternity leave should not count for or against said person.

She should get into teaching, teachers try to have babies in any of the months without an R in them

trb is right – maternity leave does not grant you immunity.

However, find me a company that is willing to go that route and I will show you a management team with very big balls and even bigger lawyers.

The reality is that women who are either pregnant or on maternity leave are afforded quite a lot of protection from redundancy simply through fear of a company falling fowl of legislation.

This issue is made more acute by the fact that there is no limit on how much you can get sued for if you are found to have discriminated on the grounds of a ‘protected characteristic’, whereas if it’s just plain wrongful or unlawful dismissal, then the limit is £50k.

You could actually claim that by not selecting someone because they are on maternity leave, that this is itself sexual discrimination against men because men could never, by virtue of their sex, be on maternity leave. That argument might be even more compelling if say you were an expectant father who was not afforded the same immunity, which is effectively the ‘convesation’ I ended up having when this happened to me last year. It didn’t change the outcome, but it did give me a better negotiation position.

My sister was made redundant whilst on maternity leave. In her case the entire team was made redundant though, so no possible arguments about discrimination really

Happened where I used to work. 2 women in a team that was offshored. Whilst management made some right cock ups in the past that was completely clean legally. Luckily, one of them then got to come back as a contractor in a different role.

Making a disabled person redundant is similarly risky but as long as you stick to the “job not person” and have it agreed by your lawyers and receive a papal bull there’s only a 50:50 chance of losing a lot of money doing it. (thought about adding a smiley but it doesn’t making me smile having done it)