Redundancy Rights – Rights for Whom?
The 1965 Redundancy Payments Act was amended by the 1975 Employment Protection Act to give substantial rights to trade unions to challenge managerial decisions on redundancies. These included advance warning of impending redundancies, the right to make representations to the employer, and to receive the employer′s reply. Cabinet ministers, introducing the legislation, felt that it would generate negotiations either to quash the redundancies or to provide alternative solutions to impending job losses. In investigating 74 incidences of redundancy, covering 10,500 workers, it was found that these rights have, for the most part, merely oiled the process of managerial decisions over redundancies, by enjoining trade unions to such decisions; decisions on which they have no real impact. Rights for trade unions, then, in practice translate to gains for employers. An important caveat to this situation occurs where an agreement on redundancies exists, generally giving workers substantial benefits, although there ar...
Leaner and possibly fitter: the management of redundancy in Britain
Economic recession has heralded massive job losses in recent years but it is not just financial expediency that has been driving firms’ redundancy programmes. Redundancy has also been a precursor of management attempts to promote the productivity and flexibility of the remaining workforce, enabling many firms to emerge both ‘leaner and fitter’ from the recession.
6. Voluntary Redundancy: A Preliminary Investigation
Voluntary redundancy (VR) has become a widespread phenomenon in British industrial relations. Combined with redundancy payments it has removed obstacles to industrial restructuring. Traditionally it has been classed as compulsory or voluntary. This obscures the complexity of redundancy and provides no guidelines for analysis. A conceptual development is needed which will enable an investigation of the full range of variables attached to the redundancy process. Characteristics of VR are outlined and its advantages and disadvantages to employers, employees, trade unions and the public interest. For society, VR encourages job losses at a time when more, rather than less, employment is needed. It also encourages increased productivity through flexible working and job demanning. A trade‐off between these competing policies is possible. At present VR presents itself as a form of alliance between employees and employers pursuing mutually consistent private interests. This tension between private interests and wider public interest is obvious. A recognition that redundancies ought to be put to a test of the public good is required.