TonyR wrote:.... Current employment law is all about the role not the person. You might think it would be simple to make a newer member of staff redundant so that the long serving member could retain a role in the company. But you can only make a role redundant, not the person, so when that newer member is made redundant its because their role has gone. And because its gone you cannot recreate it or refill it because that would mean the role was not redundant and would make the person's redundancy illegal. The only other ways to create a vacancy is if the person commits gross misconduct or they have been through a long sequence of performance management that has not worked or they decide to leave of their own volition.
Perversely, in this context, the law is there to protect newer members of staff being disadvantaged relative to long timers when redundancies are needed by making the process blind to the person in the role and focusing only on the role.
How can this work?
A company employing a software engineer finds that part of their work dries up so make them/the post redundant: later work picks up, they need a software engineer again: they can't employ a software engineer ever again? The CTC can't ever have a Technical Officer again because of the current CEO letting the current Technical Officer go?
And a better future CTC CEO can't in future reinstate a Technical <some other name meaning the same thing as Officer> ?
TonyR wrote:.....but the law is designed to prevent such people getting preferential treatment where redundancies are involved.
Surely such rules should only apply to multiple people in the same job ie lots of Software Engineers in a Software House? There was only one Technical Officer.
Also, surely the CTC cannot claim to have been be that skint: they followed the removal of the Technical Officer with the employment of a 'Communications Officer' and others. I suggest some members, like me, would have preferred a Technical Officer over a 'Communications Officer' .
Also, CJ had offered to work 'part-time/as a consultancy'-ish also covering Touring, which would have saved money .
TonyR wrote:..... Lots of people here wanted a long serving liked employee to be kept on but the law is designed to prevent such people getting preferential treatment where redundancies are involved.
I think that is an unfair guess at/representation of others thinking: I think you could just as easily say those people wanted a Technical Officer, but recognised that CJ was a very good one, who did a lot more than just answer Q&A letters(eg safety/lighting legislation etc).
Also, there was no announcement or discussion before removing a membership benefit. The members should have been asked or why be a member of the CTC?