Made Redundant

LegacyUser

I have been with my current employer for just over a year and was made redundant yesterday. I am a secretary in a law firm.
The solicitors were offered voluntary redundancy but the secretaries we just got compulsory. The solicitors are half men and half women but the secretaries are all women.

Thing is I have been asked to do a handover so is my job redundant at all? Is there anyone I should speak to and can anyone reccomend an employment law solicitor.

thanks

redundantgirl

Eoin

Sorry to hear about that.

redundantgirl wrote: »

The solicitors were offered voluntary redundancy but the secretaries we just got compulsory. The solicitors are half men and half women but the secretaries are all women.

Not sure where you're going with this.

redundantgirl wrote: »

Thing is I have been asked to do a handover so is my job redundant at all? Is there anyone I should speak to and can anyone reccomend an employment law solicitor.

I don't think anyone would expect that all the duties of someone being made redundant would no longer need to be done, so someone would have to do them. Who are you handing this work over to? Is it an existing staff member?

If you're based in Dublin, then I can recommend someone. PM me if you want details.

Nody

Yes; your position is redundant but that don't mean someone else can't do that job as part of something else as well. Because your position no longer exist (the other person will have more tasks) you are being made redundant. This is actually standard praxis when you want to fire some one by creating a new position with slightly altered tasks and name and then make everyone redundant and let them apply for the new job again.

As for the first part; perfectly legal to make different offers to different groups of staff.

leeroybrown

As pointed out above, the fact that your position is being made redundant doesn't mean the duties attached to it have ceased to exist. It's fairly standard for the duties from a redundant position to be shared among remaining positions or for the duties to be restructured and new positions to be created instead. The only situation where I wouldn't expect this to happen is if a whole section of the business is closing. My assumption in this case is that there are other legal secretaries who haven't been made redundant who will take up this workload.

The gender of the staff members is irrelevant so long as this isn't shown to be a criteria for selection for redundancy.

If I were in your position I'd do the handover as requested. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you could jeopardize your redundancy payment in any way.

mood

As you are employed for under two years you are not entitled to any redundancy payment. However, your employer may give you something are a gesture of good will.

Jo King

There may be an EAT case for unfair selection for redundancy. There may also be a potential complaint to the equality tribunal on the grounds of gender discrimination. The equality case does not look hopeful. The unfair selection depends on the criteria used to select the people made redundant. Was it lat in first out?

miec

I'm very sorry to hear your news, but I am thinking a little outside the box here, is there anyway you could ask your boss to recommend you to any other collegues he knows? Also there seems to be a few legal secretary jobs out there at the moment, judging from the job websites I've seen. I'd keep your boss sweet because you'll need a reference and he could help you find another job. It sounds pretty unfair and **** but it seems to be the way at the moment unfortunately.