Is redundancy fair?

Unfair selection for redundancy

There are a number of fair reasons why you could be made redundant, however there are several instances where selection for redundancy may be unfair.

Examples of unfair redundancy

The below are examples of ‘automatically unfair reasons’ for redundancy and these apply regardless of how long you’ve worked for your employer:

• You asked for one of your statutory working rights at work, such as the minimum wage, maternity leave or holiday entitlement
• You took action with regards to health and safety, such as making a complaint regarding breaches to health and safety at work
• You work in retail and refused to work on Sundays for religious reasons
• You were on jury service 
• You work part-time
• You work on a fixed-term contact and you are being made redundant before this term ends
• You are a member of a trade union or have been on strike
• You are a whistleblower

You can only claim unfair redundancy if one or more of the scenarios above was the reason or part of the reason why you were made redundant. You are not automatically protected from redundancy if you are say on maternity leave or a whistle-blower, they just can’t be the reasons why you’re made redundant.

If you start proceedings against your employer, then you will need to show that you have been made redundant due to an automatically unfair reason. You may be able to do this by:

• Demonstrating that other people in a similar situation, for example – if they all work part time, have also been made redundant
• Showing that others who have the same or similar jobs have not been considered for redundancy
• Demonstrating that your redundancy came directly after you’d gone on jury service, made a health and safety complaint, asked for a statutory right or played a part in whistleblowing

When an employer is choosing who to make redundant, this is known as a pool. As long as you have redundancy rights, you should be told how many people are in the pool and how the selection will be made. For this to be fair, everyone has to be scored or measured in the same way and they must only choose those who have the lowest scores or measurements to be made redundant.

To make the selection fair, this has to be based on something that can be measured, such as performance (as long as they can show they have been measuring it), your timekeeping, your disciplinary record and how long you have worked for them. 

Unfair redundancy

If you think you have been made redundant unfairly then contact our expert redundancy solicitors today on 0161 696 6170.