redundancy

[macsgiants]

the company i work for has announced they want 40 voluntary redundancy's. They want certain deparments to go first and have said when they take the voluntary redunandcy the company will say it was compulsary so that they will get there mortgage protection. If however if a person applies for voluntary redundancy and is not in the certain department they will not say this voluntary but compulsary. Is this legal.

[Postdog]

Redundancy relates to the job, not the person, so strictly speaking they cannot pick and choose who goes unless there is genuinely no more job.

Furthermore, I believe, from looking into it from my own point of view at work, voluntary redunancy could result in some getting less than they are entitled to for compulsory redundancy, and others getting more.

Any union involved?

[buildersmate]

Postdog's 1st para is right, of course. But what the company can do is seek volunteers from a wider pool of unaffected departments, on the basis that they can redeploy someone from an affected department into the volunteer's role.

Postdog's second para could be right but what decent companies do is to offer enhanced terms to volunteers (to try and get the volunteers).
The statutory minimum terms are tiny, of course, because they are capped at a low weekly rate.

The company appears to be offering to be associated with fraud if it is offering to say a voluntary redundancy is compulsory.

It is correct that staff in the redundancy pool may well be denied the opportunity to volunteer - unfortunately their jobs are gone anyway unless another volunteer arises from an unaffected department (hence see my para. 1)

[factor-fiction]

I usually agree with buildersmate and I agree with most of his answer but I'm not completely sure I agree that there is fraud involved. When a company wants to lose 100 jobs there may have to be a selection process - maybe 150 people have to apply for just 50 jobs- or it may use Last In First out or other criteria. But if the firm says it won't force people to apply and will allow them in effect to volunteer, I'm not sure if that's fraud. After all if the employee was forced to apply he could simply put in a poor application and thereby get compulsory redundancy. Having said that I understand VR does prevent you claiming JSA straight away.

[buildersmate]

Perhaps I explained it poorly, F30.
If someone who is not in the pool decides to volunteer for redundancy, and the company accepts that person's offer, then the volunteer claims on his mortgage protection policy that he has been made redundant , the insurance checks and is told the volunteer was made redundant, I suspect that is fraud. It is not what the purpose of the policy was for.

[macsgiants]

so all in all the multi national company i work ( who announced 3 billion pound profit last year) are acting illeagally.

[buildersmate]

Not quite sure what the purpose of your statement above is - do you want help with this or not? It appears not.
Mine is an opinion (which may be wrong) and I am happy to discuss the logic of it. It is about the nature and size of the 'pool' from which the company is seeking redundancies.
Merely to now assert that, since you work for a large multinational, they couldn't possibly be be doing it wrong is a pretty pointless statement. In my opinion.

[macsgiants]

i was mearly trying to ascertain that the company i worked for was acting illegal or not. Why should I for example get exactly the same redundancy package and terms as anyone else.

[Eve]

Sounds like potential insurance fraud to me though it would be the person providing false information to claim on their policy who would be commiting the fraud with the company and accessory if they provide false information to back up the claim.

The way to look at it is that, would the insurance co pay out if they knew the full facts. If the answer is no then it's fraud, providing false information to gain a percuniary advantage, obtaining money by deception.

[Memore]

I have worked for companies that have done this - it is not fraud as they still have to make 40 redundancies so it is really a compulsory exercise they are just going the easier route by asking for volunteers first - ie if they dont get them there will be compulsory redundancy as they have to lose 40 people and as said earlier the net is cast wide so they can redeploy - I dont think this is the best way to do it but it isnt illegal