Well, just come out of the Commanding Officer’s office and the good news is I’m not one of the 5000 poor unfortunates getting the chop this morning. Job security for another couple of years at least, until 2015/16 FY when George decides he wants another pound of flesh and Dave reneges on his recent promise not to make any more of us redundant…

Congratulations. Must be very hard to feel happy when so many colleagues are going to be let go. Might be a strange question but do you get redundancy pay in the forces or do they just terminate any contract you have?

Good to hear. I’m expecting bad news for a lot of friends today…

Wish they would realise they can’t go around picking fights all the time and then cutting the armed forces!

Pfft! Its not like you lot have had much to do for the last ten years, is it? 😉

Might be a strange question but do you get redundancy pay in the forces or do they just terminate any contract you have?

http://www.mod-rc.co.uk/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9762890/Defence-cuts-to-hit-9500-Army-posts.html

Figures show that the cost for the first 2,835 redundancies in the Armed Forces was £102 million.

So averaged £36k…

@tonyd

Might be a strange question but do you get redundancy pay in the forces or do they just terminate any contract you have?

Yeah, we do get a redundancy package. In relative terms, 5 or 10 years ago it used to be quite attractive, during the last SDR round in 2003/4 there were some more senior officers who played it canny and walked away with north of 250k, but now it’s in line with civvy terms.

@somouk

I’m expecting bad news for a lot of friends today…

Phones and emails full of gossip going round now…

@b_r

So averaged £36k…

Key word there is average – that 36k figure is significantly affected by the number of very senior types that went. The average Tommy would get considerably less than that…

Congratulations, although redundancy is great (for a while) it means you get to go out on your bike more and spend fruitless hours loitering about on here 😉

You do need money though, life is expensive at times.

Lots more “ARMY Fitness” training schemes in our local parks then, weirdly they all disapear in the winter, surely the army train all year round, not just when its sunny, but the ones who pay for it dont like the dark nights..

Key word there is average – that 36k figure is significantly affected by the number of very senior types that went. The average Tommy would get considerably less than that…

Well the money can’t be that bad, 84% are volunteers.

but now it’s in line with civvy terms.

Unless you’re now getting statutory redundancy I doubt that. Do you get in lieu of notice pay, that often makes the payout bigger, in fact in my last couple of redundancies it’s been the largest part by far, the actual redundancy payment was pathetic.

reality check.. some 715 people are receiving compulsory notices of redundancy out of a workforce of just under 100000..

those facing compulsory redundancy have a 1 year period before they have to leave.

very generous packages are avilable including paid for retraining and lump sums add in the generous pension schemes and redundancy becomes an attractive employment benifit for some especially the 3800 who put thier hands up for voluntary redundancy and were accepted and the 1500 whose applications were refused..

wait. so this headline of 5000 jobs being cut, over 75% of them will be pleased about it.

add in the generous pension schemes

Not unless you’ve reached or passed the approrpiate pension point, which, in most cases, won’t have happened, so redundees will get a considerably reduced pension, at 67. Put it this way, I’m 2 years from my pension point but if I’d been made redundant my pension would have been approximately 20% of what I would get if I served to IPP, despite having already done 20 years. So no not very attractive at all.

As far as volunteers, the feeling is very much “jump before being pushed”, largely those who are a significant distance from IPP and therefore stand to lose less in the long term with having the opportunity for a full second career.

No in lieu of notice pay either.

My mate was an engineer for the commandos and got his redundancy today, he was over the moon.

He’s been speaking for quite a while how he really hoped he would make the cut.