my wife has been put on redundancy notice. the way she has been put on notice sounds iffy to me.

A recently employed person has been given essentially the same responsibilities as my wife. with my wife’s team reporting to this new person instead of my wife.

there has never been any mention of problems with the way my wife was doing her job.

and yet it seems they have maneuvered her out of her job and are now trying to make her redundant.

has anyone else had anything similar happen to them? is this legal?

you can fight it but basically you will loose eventually, for whatever reason they have decided to get rid of your wife, they will find a way.

Start thinking about what’s next.

What is the new role title and job description vs your wifes ?
You mkae a role redundant, not a person. Although in reality you make the role redundant to get rid of a person in many many cases. Not that I am saying yoru wife is in anyway at fault of course 😯
Once yuo have that comparison you have the opportunity to ask why the role is being disestablished and why the new role is the same etc etc.
Depends if yuo can be assed fighting it really.
as he said ^ when there is a will there is a way whether you like it or not.

There’s some useful information on the Citizens Advice website which will give her the legal perspective:
Citizens Advice Adviceguide – work

I suspect that if they employed the new person before they gave your wife notice then she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on although they may have to show that they have been fair in how they selected her for redundancy (easy to manipulate that one though).

Sounds more like constructive dismissal to me….

I’m no expert, but it doesn’t sound like constructive dismissal to me, unless she leaves before she is pushed.

I would also say that the comments above all depend entirely on how professional her employer is, and how careful they have been. It’s very easy to get the process wrong, and it’s easy to get an Employment Tribunal interested where the balance generally leans towards the Employee. Of course to do this you have to leave first (constructive dismissal) or get dismissed (made redundant).

The question is what would she hope to achieve if she won, as they don’t sound like people she would want to continue working for even if she could (although I appreciate there’s not a lot of choice out there just now).

How long has she worked there?

4 years,

we both know the best option is get what she is entitled to and move on,

I was just a little surprised that a company was able to do this.

as was said earlier, a position is made redundant, not the person, but it seem like someone else is working in the same position.

the company isn’t very professional, they have already been to a tribunal for unfair dismissal before. which might mean they have learnt the correct way of doing it now : /

Don’t take their first offer is the obvious advise.
I would be after 6 months wages or so as an opening negotiation starter.

I was just a little surprised that a company was able to do this.

Sadly not, my company does this all the time. Our HR department spends most of its time sorting out Compromise agreements for fired employees. Never seen anything like this anywhere else mind, just some companies treat people like a disposable commodity.

does the new employee do the same job as your wife?

Generally you dont have full employment rights until 2 years into a role [ contract may be more generous than the law] so generally the new employee would just be sacked for any spurious reason. Clearly they want your wife gone for whatever reason
They wll be able to do this legally, unless they mess it uo badly.

Personally I would just accept it and negotiate hard for a very good deal and reference.
t is not right but better to look at getting the best out of it that she can and that is unlikely to include keeping her job.
Sorry to hear this some employers are just not nice.

As suggested, if two people do the same job, then when chosing a redundancy pool of employees to decide who gets the boot you can’t include one and not the other. I think.

oh and to make things interesting, she is 5 months pregnant.

we both know the best option is get what she is entitled to and move on,

The best option is to get more.

oh and to make things interesting, she is 5 months pregnant.

Handy if you’d mentioned this at the beginning…

I’d let them go through with the process, but if she’s looking at been off/on mat. anyway later – then go sick now, with stress 😉

i know it should’t but the pregnancy changes things a lot i would suggest.

Rather than maternity cover they seem to be trying to manage her out and avoid the cost of maternity and cover.

Not that easy. They would have to pay her redundancy plus her contractual maternity pay

the maternity issue changes it massively I would imagine in terms of protection and also in terms of a constructive dismissal claim.
Was the new person hired after they new she was pregnant?

good info here

http://www.maternityaction.org.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/redundancy.pdf

She is pregnant so will be off worrk for quite a while, so easier to get rid and not have to pay maternity and have continuation of work from somebody new and more wiling.

Thats how buisness works now.

You dont say what the reasons your wifes employers gave for the redundancy or have they just put her at risk of redundancy?

in my recent experience even the most blue chip of blue chip companies can be as dishonest and underhand as your local burgling scrote.

HR exist purely to carry out the will of management.

All you can IMO is get the best deal you can and get out, and focus your energies on her pregnancy and your future…

tbh whilst my job situation is not ideal, I think what happened to me was one of the best things that ever has – opened my eyes and made me far more aware of the games that are played by allegedly respectable companies…

Hope all turns out ok

My brother had 2 women working for him – one was hard working other was lazy nine to fiver. The hard worker went on maternity leave and when she came back asked to work part time – 3 days a week – no problem he said. Lazy woman went on maternity leave and when she came back asked to go part time as well – he said no and she ended up leaving which is exactly what he wanted. Moral of the story is maternity leave isn’t a problem for good workers – just the ones they want to get rid of anyway.

Her employer would have to be EITHER very confident or very stupid laying off a pregnant member of staff. Get professional advice asap good luck hope it doesn’t drag out.