Our work has recently expanded the department I work in, then this week the whole department has been put at risk. My question is that some of the staff, about 3 employees, have been employed within the past few weeks and had left permanent job to join our company, now face certain redundancy with little to no package on offer. Can the company do this??? Doesn’t seem right

Doesn’t seem right

It’s not nice. Don’t think it’s illegal though…

That said, the new people might be kept and you might be on your ear. Length of service isn’t always considered in the calculations of who gets the chop.

Ironically, they might be more safe than you imagine.

If the company wanted to get rid of the newbies they can just sack them with no real reason required.

It’s the long timers who should  be bricking it.

thankfully I’m not in scope so am safe for now. It’s pretty rubbish, single mum’s just in getting the bullet etc.

Look at the skill set of the newbies looks like thats what the co were looking for. As said above, the older guys may be at risk.

Have you just trained your replacements?

As they new employees have been there less than 24 months they have very little redundancy rights – they can simply be dismissed with little notice / pay in lieu.

Crappy thing to do.

I once joined a ‘strong’ company, in thier words at interview. They were about to implode, losing £100k’s a year.

Since then I’ve always done my homework well. This has served me well, although did earn an ear bashing from CEO of a chain of Scottish Outdoor Centres who thought I was wrong to have looked them up on companies House and discovered the plans for shiny new centres and investments was basically a pipedream and lie…

I got six weeks in a new job then made redundant. Company policy was “last in, first out”.

Though it was more about having spent loads of cash on an expansion, recruited loads of people, and then had the investors pull out, scuppering IPO plans that was going to pay for it.

That said, they did pay out a reasonable package, beyond what was legally necessary.

Things are different these days though with the whole “probationary period” thing which seems to mean you have very little rights until you’ve been there long enough.