Subject: Career Advice..

Morning Funsters,

I am hoping for some advice.. I have this 'friend' who feels more comfortable in womens clothing and....

Also.. this 'friend' is going to take voluntary redundancy.. as they are outsourcing my roll to Romania..there is an option to go and work in Romania and it is slightly tempting to head to the home of European porn but, in the small print, there's something about being migrated to local salary rates over time and I cannot live on 3 turnips a month. The 'sod off' package is pretty good so I want to stick around for it..and the working date they've given us is 31st October.. this is fine.. but they say that this date is subject to change..ie they can push it back if the Romanians are not ready..and if you leave before the official date (whenever that's confirmed as being) you are deemed to have resigned and forfeit your cash.

My question is this... can anyone tell me at what point the company must issue a fixed end date? As the lack of one is slighlty hampering my lining up another job.. as when it comes to the "When can you start question" I'm kind of having to look at my shoes and mumble "Erm.. I'm not sure".

I guess if you want the sod off cash, you have to wait until they tell you to sod off ? *

* I am not an employment lawyer.

I'm not an employment lawyer either, but I believe:

No date your employer indicates to you is set in stone until you are issued with formal notice on redundancy.

The minimum notice periods you employer must give you are:

one week - if you have been employed for at least one month but less than two years
two weeks - if you have been employed for two years
three weeks - for three years
...and so on, up to twelve weeks

Also, providing you have worked for your employer for 2 years by the time you are made redundant, you're entitled to reasonable paid leave to look for another job.

Basically if a few of you are being made redundant at the same time, the minimum notice will be that of the longest serving employee.

Right now 31st Oct is approx 9 weeks away - your employer will have to issue formal notice before your or one of your colleagues are inside your minimum notice period (as stated above). So unless anyone has been there 9 years, your employer can wait a little longer.

Am I right in thinking that they could offer "gardening leave" under these circumstances, in which case the notice period starts from the day they issue the redundancies, but you're effectively paid not to work, freeing you up to look for / work somewhere else ?

Unfortunately, in my case, in addition to the basic payout.. there is a sort of loyalty bonus (which is to ensure we train up the guys who are getting our jobs and don't just all bugger off before the replacements are trained up).. which whilst not a ton of cash is another 7.5k so, being a money grabbing whore I want to ensure I get the maximum amount of company cash before emptying my desk & being escorted from the building by security.

How many people are being made redundant? They have to have a consultation period for selection and a proper notice of termination. None of this floating end date rubbish.

A redundancy payment isn't due to you if work picks up and your employer offers to keep you on, or offers you suitable alternative work which you refuse without good reason. If you leave your job for a new one before the end of your notice period, your payment might also be affected.

Look here

I think is it just under the magic 90..

The problem is it's voluntary redundancy.. as they have offered us the option to relocate or try and find alternate roles in the company.. the bottom line however is it's the usual cost saving exercise.. and even those alternate roles will be shipped to Romania in the next 12 - 18 months..

Thing is they've got a bunch of grossly overpaid, fairly highly skilled, techies doing a job that a retarded monkey could do in its sleep. Which, to be fair, is how we spend the majority of our time... so they don't want us to take alternate roles within the company... they want us to leave.. but.. on a voluntary basis... (although if we were just to resign the management would be over the moon, ie no payout) so we've had to apply for redundancy.. and it was only reading through the details of the severance package that I noticed the slightly ambiguous wording around the proposed end date being XXXX, and then contacted HR who said that this could be subject to change depending on the business needs and how well the handover was going...

I'm sure there must be a cut off date whereby they are obligated to confirm our exact end date..be it 1 month, 2 months or whatever ahead of the actual end date..

it's the same as your contractual notice period (or the longest serving employee's contractual notice)

I.e if you're on 4 weeks notice they wouldn't have to confirm the 31/10 date until the 1st week of October.
(edited)

Cool - thanks.

And thanks to everyone else who replied...

I'm off to Romania to bag a porn starlet....

Thing is they've got a bunch of grossly overpaid, fairly highly skilled, techies doing a job that a retarded monkey could do in its sleep

Hmm - do you work for me ?

Apologies for the confusion.. I realise it's an extremely generic IT job description...

No problem, I have yet to have a job that didn't eventually degenerate into that kind of description.

Hmm - maybe it's me.

This is almost identical to what happened at my old job before the VAT fraud fiasco...i think the consultation period (end date) can only be extended by 60 days.

Or maybe it's 90.

It's voluntary early departure then. Not subject to redundancy rules.

If they didn't find another people taking the offer, they'd have to specify roles, selection criteria and have a consultation period. At best after that, they can ask you to work the notice period.