Ajack1,
I could wish that I had invented it all and that it always happened as the legal requirements intended. Sadly, in the UK, unlike France where law making is easier because it is, conversely, the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law that matters, English law is all about the letter of the law. It matters about where a comma goes and precise wording. It opens the door to management to seek to abide by the letter of the law while thrusting a dagger through its spirit.
Of course, I should have to concede that maybe some of the examples I give from my earlier working life have been made curiosities by changes in the law, but I suggest there is a wide gap between what is intended and what actually can happen.
Management can and do act in ways which ought to be considered morally reprehensible but management is skilled in exploiting and evading the laws. Often they justify their actions as a "legal obligation to the shareholders".
I have witnessed instances of all the examples I gave, at some time over the course of my working life in the UK, some in companies I have worked for, some in others.
The Ageism example was UK national Bank and not all that long ago.
Discrimination is only discrimination if someone decides to make the call. In many instances people do not.
Also, be aware of the trip limits that determine when certain rules come into force and below which they don't.
Companies also are very aware of the legal situation and much of their strategy is based on exploiting every possible means to do things their way.
Lay-offs do not come overnight. They are usually preceded by a period of poor performance. This creates a scenario where there are no pay rises. where workers find more and more responsibilities placed on them as workers leave, are not replaced and the management wants the same amount of work done. By the time redundancies come around the salary level, upon which redundancy payments are calculated, is well below par. Many employees, often the most able, have taken the "natural wastage" route.
Retraining? Help with finding new jobs? again, the legal minimum doesn't actually do much for the worker beyond satisfying the legal requirements.
At one company they decided after many years long service, to dump one of the office girls. They didn't make here redundant, they instead offered her a promotion on a new contract with a trial period. But, being sloppy, they fired her one day after her trial period was over, instead of the day before, and I was able to advise her to take the company to court for wrongful dismissal which she did and which earned her a useful settlement.
One engineer at my last company was one of the older folk slated for redundancy (contradictory: ever a fully ageist policy the proportion of older employees is none the less high but far from balanced; legally? what chance would anyone have to show that they were being discriminatory?). His retraining options? non-existent. Help finding a new job? A token - mainly it consisted of bringing the job centre people into the offices. They found him nothing.
In the end, he found himself a new job in the aerospace part of the group in the adjacent building.
When management learned of it they told him that because it was a sister company he didn't qualify for redundancy payment. There was a lot of heat generated over this but what the outcome was, I don't fully recall. It was an argument about whether he would transfer with his seniority etc. or whether he should be considered to have become unemployed by the company before taking up his new role.
They then sold the aerospace company for £43million at the bottom of the aerospace depression almost while still arguing about his paltry redundancy payment.
In my own case, having declined to apply for their new job and taken the redundancy option they had to rescind it all for a couple of weeks while I went out to Russia to complete a project (which personally, I didn't mind as I wanted this success to my credit) and then re-instate the redundancy on my return.
To believe that everything is open, honest and above board and that the management are well intentioned and have the workers interests at heart at all times may be fine with some companies but not with others.
Some companies/management can be extraordinarily vindictive when thwarted. This isn't about "shareholder" duty but personal nature.
At one company
rationalisation meant closing down a factory and shifting the manufacturing and personnel 10 miles up the road to another factory.
Some people they let go. Others they were obliged to make redundant and take on under new contracts at the new place of employment.
The service engineering manager was nearing retirement age and had been with the company, man and boy, all his working life from its being a family owned London company to a Sussex subsidiary of a major conglomerate.
He looked at how much redundancy he would be entitled to. He decided to to take the money and set up in business for himself doing exactly what he had done before but as an independent agent (at the competing company they called in all their service engineers and told them they were no longer employed by the company but were to be set up as self-employed independent agents).
The company had to pay him his redundancy and they then blacked him. To carry out his service work he had to visit clients, see what parts were needed and get them to order the parts for him as the company would not supply him.
A colleague was posted to the USA to run the engineering group. Political infighting at the UK head office suddenly saw him recalled with no job to come to. They made up a job for him which, with nothing esle to do, he had to accept but almost immediately he then found a position with a US company and quit to take it up. The chairman of the group then wrote a letter to the US employer which was as blatant a piece of libellous character assassination as you could find. Legal? not likely under either UK or US law, but it didn't stop the chairman doing it. Fortunately for my colleague the US employer laughed it of and took it for what it was.
The reason we have laws and lawyers is because people don't always do what they are expected to do. Whether we can afford lawyers or not or know enough to know when we need them is something else again.
JMW
