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Professional advice needed please help

17 replies

cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 19:16

Its a long one, but... work for local council who is currently restructuring. They have decided to cut the number of people who do my role currently their are three people trying to go for two full time jobs.

Have been asked to preference... done, but was lead to believe that I was to indicate the number of hours I want to return in Sept and work so have told them this - now found out this is not the case.

Have been called for interview next week, when I have been off work for 8 months already, they know I am wanting to come back part time and I am still on maternity leave. I am a band 8 now and they have said that should I not be successful there arte plenty of band 5 jobs availible ...

Is it just me or is all of this totally unreasonable.. My son is 5 months old, I don't have child care so can't take personnel up on the offer of a meeting (4 days notice on interview). I currently manage band 5+6 so the thought of having to do that job I feel is unreasonable. I ahve no access to the policies and procedures, I am not upto date with current trends etc for interview.

Can they do this to me. Nobody seems to be able to help and I am feeling very very isolated.
I feel like I am being taken for a ride!

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 19:20

And I was told of the possibility of this in Janaury... heard nothing untill last friday when a letter arrived to tell me my job no longer exsisted and I was to preference!! How can this happen?

I am so cross. Maternity leave is given for a reason and they are taking the most important happiest days of my babies life away from me.

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flowerybeanbag · 13/03/2008 19:29

sorry cupcake I'm a bit confused. What is to 'preference'?

If there is a redundancy situation, as there is with your current role, and 3 people going for 2 jobs, one of them must be offered to you as you are on maternity leave. You cannot be asked to compete for it, you must be given first refusal.

So you should have a full time job in the bag, no question. Once that's all sorted, then think about the part time aspect. Put in a flexible working request to reduce the hours for that post, or job share, or whatever it is you want.

Don't let the fact that you actually want to return part time cloud the fact that one of those full time jobs is yours. Changing the hours can come later but make sure your name is firmly on one of those jobs first.

Why do you not have access to policies and procedures? If they are not online will no one email them to you?

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 20:08

They are not classing it as redundancy they are classing it as redeployment and I think thats how they are trying to get away with it.

Preferencing was .. we were given a list of roles that were being changed and asked to give the prefered three options. This was apparently to try and avoid interview.

Are you sure they have to offer me one of the posts if the title is changing and they are passing it off as another post? If so how do you suggest I tell them this?

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 20:08

They are not classing it as redundancy they are classing it as redeployment and I think thats how they are trying to get away with it.

Preferencing was .. we were given a list of roles that were being changed and asked to give the prefered three options. This was apparently to try and avoid interview.

Are you sure they have to offer me one of the posts if the title is changing and they are passing it off as another post? If so how do you suggest I tell them this?

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 20:10

And if it is another post should it not be made open for everyone to apply.

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 20:13

Sorry about so many little posts. No access to policies and as I have been deleted off the computer and therefore have no emails to catch up on, no intranet access. Personnel will post them to me but always state that the most upto date copy is on the intranet and they are constantly changing. I am at such a disadvantage.

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flowerybeanbag · 13/03/2008 20:14

This is a redundancy situation, it just might not actual result in a person being redundant, but if there were 3 posts and now there are two, that's a redundancy situation.

The law is that if a person on maternity leave is in a redundancy situation, and there is a suitable alternative post for them, they must be offered it. Whether it has the same job title or even the same responsibilities doesn't matter, if there is a suitable post it must be offered to the person on maternity leave as a first refusal. I will find you a link, hang on.

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 20:16

Your a star, thanks for your help

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flowerybeanbag · 13/03/2008 20:16

Here you go, BERR, see the paragraph entitled redundancy during maternity leave, first sentence, if there is a suitable alternative it must be offered.

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cupcake78 · 13/03/2008 20:26

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I don't know who you are but I think your great. It's my 30th birthday today and you have improved it greatly.

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flowerybeanbag · 13/03/2008 20:33

No worries, happy birthday!

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cupcake78 · 15/03/2008 20:02

I have spoken to work regarding this and being asked to compete for my role. I have also spoken to ACAS but tell me as long as I am treated the same way as I would be if I was at work then I have to go through the interview process. I have told them about the website etc and whatthey are saying is unless I can find somehting thatsays thatI cannot be asked to compete for a role while on maternity leave I will be expected to come to the interview. Planned for next wed so I only have 2 working days to sort this out. Can you advise me how to deal with this now?

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flowerybeanbag · 15/03/2008 20:38

cupcake ACAS are wrong.

It is a fact that if there is a suitable role for you, you cannot be made to compete for it if you are on maternity leave.

Normal employment law principles would specify that treatment on maternity leave must not be detrimental, ie, as long as you are treated as if you were not on maternity leave, that's fine.

But this circumstance is an exception, which lots of HR people don't know about, because it goes against normal principles.

That BERR link does say that, I will quote it below:

'If a redundancy situation arises at any stage during an employee?s maternity leave which means it is not practicable for the employer to continue to employ her under her original contract of employment, she is entitled to be offered (before that contract ends) a suitable alternative vacancy, where one is available.'

'Offered'. Not 'given the opportunity to compete for'. 'Offered.' This is your exact circumstance. It's not possible for your employer to continue to employ you under your original contract because there is a restructure, and there are less jobs available. But there is as suitable alternative vacancy available, therefore you must be offered it.

I am disappointed in ACAS giving you incorrect legal advice. That BERR link should be enough, the quote I've pulled out and copied here, but I will try and find the exact details of what piece of legislation it is that states that, so you can quote that at your employer.

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flowerybeanbag · 15/03/2008 20:50

cupcake here is the actual piece of legislation, see regulation 10. The BERR website have actually quoted it more or less word for word.

I'm a bit p'd off about what you're going through frankly. Lots of HR people don't know about this regulation as I've said, so I am happy to advise people to cut their HR departments a bit of slack while they check it out, but when it comes to ACAS giving incorrect legal advice as well as your employer not even checking it out before saying no, it winds me right up - these people are paid to do this and it means you are going through this stress and hassle completely unnecessarily on your maternity leave, and having to come here for help when you shouldn't have to. (for you)

I would advise you to email both those links to your HR department, pointing out regulation 10 in the second one, and also say that you are more than happy to wait for them to check with their lawyer, which they will want to do.

I'm not a lawyer, I will say that, but I do have first hand experience of implementing this piece of legislation, as well as experience of guiding other posters on here through the same experience you are having. You will be pleased to hear previous posters' employers did back down once they'd check with their solicitor.

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flowerybeanbag · 15/03/2008 21:59

I've just noticed that your employer has said you are expected to produce something legal to prove your point, they are not even prepared to go away and check this for themselves! Since when should it be up to the employee to check what the law says?!

Sorry, rant rant!

Hope those links do the trick for you anyway.

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cupcake78 · 16/03/2008 18:01

flowery, thank you for your help. I will approach them again in the morning with this. I also believe they are out of order but don't want to rock the boat as I honestly believe they just don't know.

I have a feeling they will come back to me on the basis of redeployment and offer me a lower band with pay protection, as they have a current post that they can't fill, which they are classing as a sutible post. Reason being they are offering a band 6 post to band 8 staff and wonder why we're not interested . Doesn't take a genuis does it! Any ideas how this would stand?

I don't want and alternative post I enoy the role I have got. Don't want to be a pain to you but feel I need to be fully prepared for them coming back to me as time is running out.

Thank you for your time and effort on this I appreciate it so very much...

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flowerybeanbag · 16/03/2008 19:45

I'm sure they don't know, you are right. But I do think they should be the ones checking!

A lower band post wouldn't count as a suitable alternative, even with pay protection - the suitable alternative must be on no less terms and conditions and that means things like status and responsibility level as well as pay. If there is a suitable band 8 job available, which you say there is, doing the same or similar things as you were doing before, then that's the most suitable job.

If there were 3 of you with a job each, and the number of those jobs is going down to 2, there will only be one person out of the three of you who has to be deployed to something less suitable. All they have to do is make sure that's not you. It's not as if it's going to be difficult to find you something suitable, and it's not as if there's no one else that can be deployed to the role on a different band. This isn't difficult, I suspect they want to do this to you rather than one of your colleagues because they know you are going to want to work part time. It's vital you keep that as a separate issue, it's nothing to do with this.

If they ask you about part time working when you are discussing this restructuring, just say you have not put in a flexible working request at the moment and would like to keep this discussion focused on the restructuring.

What they should really be doing is saying to you 'one of these full time jobs is yours, have a think about whether you want to work part time, and we'll discuss whether/how that might be possible with this job'. Because obviously it's a bit weird to have to ignore the part time thing at this point.

But the problem is at the moment they are not acknowledging that one of those jobs is yours by right, so any discussion about part time working has to wait until that's resolved.

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