In Shanahan Engineering Limited v Unite the Union the EAT have considered the special circumstances defence to a claim for a protective award for failing to consult in accordance with s. 188 TULR(C)A 1992 (collective redundancy consultation).
The EAT held that even if the defence does not apply as a total defence to the complaint, where there are some special circumstances, these can be taken in to account when determining the length of the protective award. The judgment also gives some general guidance on determining the length of a protective award.
Lloyd’s Banking Group have confirmed their decision to close all Black Horse personal finance centres, which will result in the loss of 455 jobs. In addition, a further 185 jobs are at risk in the retail and wholesale business. Lloyd’s are intending to have implemented these changes by March 2011.
It has been reported that the Government’s proposal to sell the Land Registry to the private sector could result in as many as 1,500 job losses.
It is expected that the Land Registry’s 7,700 staff will meet today and be informed of the reasons behind the potential redundancies. It is expected that all roles will be affected from administrative assistants to senior civil servants.
Christmas is always a time for bursts of short term employment, extra staff in shops and restaurants, stand-ins for Santa/elves etc. Sainsbury’s have already announced that they will need to take on 20,000 temporary staff over the Christmas period. Tesco have come up with a novel but sensible idea (’why didn’t I think of that’ cry the other supermarket chains!) of supporting their staff by hiring redundant family members and friends to fill their proposed 6,000 Christmas vacancies. Simple yet effective.
British Airways have announced further job losses of 1,700, many of whom are cabin crew taking voluntary redundancy. A further 3,000 employees have chosen to reduce their hours to part time in a bid to assist BA in reducing costs. These changes are expected to take effect from November.
The trade union, Unite, have spoken out and speculatively told BA to expect further cuts in the future.
is all in a burger (or chicken nuggets with fries) according to McDonald’s announcement yesterday of analyst busting monthly sales rises. It is good to report on a company which is actually benefiting from our tightening of belts (possibly loosening again upon leaving the outlet) and is not having to implement widescale redundancies and other cost saving measures.
What has contributed to this success? Why has McDonald’s succeeded whilst others (we won’t compare to Burger King here) have floundered? Some will put this down to their re-directed focus towards food health issues (they do now offer salads), others to their highly tuned brand (whose toddler does not recognise the golden M?) and others to value for money.
Whatever it is, those working and eating and owning McDonald’s are certainly McHappy today.
Look out for a ‘Working with redundancy’ supplement to feature in early September’s Daily Telegraph. Should feature some useful best practice hints and tips as well as recent case scenarios and lessons learnt. We’ll blog again when the supplement is published.
British Telecoms have applied some creative thinking to try and ride through the recession with as few compulsory redundancies as possible. Back in June they suggested ‘lending’ out employees to a competitor in a move that raised eyebrows due to the associated difficulty of protecting corporate secrets and know-how. Industry sources, however, said this wasn’t an issue as the employees involved weren’t party to anything more than ‘water-cooler’ gossip.
BT followed this move at the beginning of July by asking staff to take a 75% pay cut in return for long term holidays. Other initiatives included offering staff a one off payment of £1000 for going part time and giving parents the opportunity to work around school holidays.
Today’s move represents a major shift in thinking for BT. They have announced that they are bringing at least 2.000 call centre jobs in India back to Britain as they close half of its customer service operation on the sub-continent. BT insist this is nothing to do with the quality of service offered in India.
BT is just of a number of companies that has been forced into a radical rethink of its employment terms. Others include British Airways and KPMG, to name but a few. It just shows that a little lateral thinking and creativity can go along ways in the fight for corporate survival.
A new BBC survey has found that 67% of those surveyed knew someone who had lost their job in the recession and that 40% of those surveyed feared losing their own job in the current climate. 69% of people felt that losing their job would be very damaging for their finances.
There are also interesting results on consumer spending and the public perception of the recession. 34% think it will worsen, 12% felt it was improving and the 52% felt things would not improve for a while yet.
Here at PJH Law we continue to advise on redundancies and other more short term cost savings but have seen a reduction in this type of advice of late from the end of last year and beginning of this year. How are you finding things…..
