Employment Law: Redundancy In The Workplace

Employment law is fraught with complex legislative frameworks and the area of redundancy is no different. Employers are entitled to make an employees position redundant. This may effect a single employee, a collective group or even a firms entire workforce should a full closure of business arise. Usually a savvy employer will offer the opportunity of voluntary redundancy in the first instance followed by a compulsory approach if needed (Cox et al,2009). So what legal protections are afforded to employees facing a redundancy situation? We will seek to answer this question concisely and comprehensively in this paper with a particular focus on contemporary forms of protest and resistance, its merits and success for whom that may be should the

I will not just state or lay out the law and accept it as is. I believe that type of informing provides an injustice to the reader who is yearning for a comprehensive establishment of the legal protections surrounding redundancy, in particular, shining a light on the legal frailties if

An employee is entitled to two weeks salary per year of service with an additional bonus week. This sum is capped at €600 per week or €31,200 per annum. The payment of redundancy applies to all employees who have completed at lest 104 weeks continuous service. This offers little protection to workers and Whelan and Walsh (1977) argue that this length of service condition bars the majority of people who become unemployed due to redundancy. In examining figures in the UK which contains a similar 2 years continuous service requirement, Fryers (1971) comes to a rough estimate that only 1 in 3 receive payment from a redundancy situation. Barrett (1998) distinguishes between a visible system consisting of statutory redundancy with an additional ex gratia payment which he argue is dependant on a number of factors, the strongest being the unionisation of a workforce in bargaining better terms of employment. In relation to the inferior ‘invisible’ system he sums it up drawing on Daniels (Cited in Barrett, 1998: