Redundancy Laws

Redundancy laws are intended to provide a fair and just framework through which this difficult, regrettable but sometimes unavoidable process can be carried out. One of the most important aspects of redundancy law is the provision of redundancy pay, which seeks to compensate an employee for his dismissal with a tax-free sum that proportionately reflects the length of service he has given to the company, provided he has been working there for more than two years.

Although often used by many people as a synonym for any kind of dismissal, redundancy is actually a well-defined legal term that refers to a specific type of dismissal. Redundancy is when a person is dismissed because they are no longer needed by their employer. Generally, this happens for one of three reasons:

• Complete cessation of the employer’s business.
• The shutting down of the employee’s place of work.
• Reduction in the number of workers needed to do the employee’s job.

According to redundancy law, a redundancy may count as unfair dismissal if unreasonable criteria have been used to select the individual being made redundant. For the redundancy to be fair, the employer must have created a justifiable set of criteria which are used to select the employee or employees to be made redundant (e.g. length of service, skills, qualifications or disciplinary proceedings), and must then apply these criteria rigorously and without bias to all employees being considered for redundancy.

If an employer can be shown to have selected an employee for redundancy using irrelevant or unjustifiable criteria (such as age, sex, race or disability), then they have clearly not carried out the selection process in a fair manner, and there is every likelihood that the redundancy can be classed as unfair dismissal, with all the inherent consequences this entails.

Redundancy Rights

If you think that your redundancy rights are being infringed, we can help you to redress the balance. As specialist employment lawyers with many years of experience in dealing with redundancy law cases, we are the ideal law firm to turn to if you have a problem that involves redundancy law. Call us today on 020 7408 1338 for a free initial consultation, or get in touch with us via our contact page.