Coronavirus: Your workplace questions

I will start it off then :)

We have 27 people that we hired after the 28th of feb so they wouldnt be on our payroll until the 29th of March as we are a monthly payer, We had to furlough on the 25th unable to claim for these people. The gov site has been updated yesterday to say the following:

If your employee is on unpaid leave
Employees on unpaid leave cannot be furloughed, unless they were placed on unpaid leave after 28 February.

I dont get this one because it also says:

Employees hired after 28 February 2020 cannot be furloughed or claimed for in accordance with this scheme.

I would appreciate if anyone in the community has a better understanding of this. We want to try and get these people a source of finance without having to make them redundant.

It seems very arbitrary and unfair but I can see why some anti-fraud criteria are needed. Imagine if the 'on payroll 28 Feb' rule wasn't there and you were an unprincipled small employer - you could put all your family and friends on payroll the day after the scheme was announced, immediately furlough them and pay them 80% if whatever your notional salary was, in effect acting as a pipeline for money to travel from the treasury to people whom you had no intention of employing in normal times.

When the grants end, the unprincipled employer would terminate them with < 2 years service and no redundancy cost. You might say 'that would never happen' but there would be some. This is emergency payment, employers need it yesterday to stay solvent, so no chance to investigate or audit claims - the only choice is an arbitrary rule.

Unfortunately that rule will disadvantage anyone genuinely moving jobs or starting work after 28 February - more people than you might think. A very rough estimate, employee population say 20 million (working pop is 30 million plus but that will include self employed, 'workers' and the like), labour turnover 6% so 0.5% change jobs every month, so c.100,000 people may have taken up new job offers in March and their employer won't get paid to furlough them. A fairer rule would be 'in work or holding a job offer on 28 February' but backdated job offers are far to easy to create.

I'm afraid I can't offer any useful suggestions much as I would like to. I have no relevant state benefits expertise, sounds like Universal Credit might be the only route for them. Hopefully someone else on this forum can chip in.

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It seems very arbitrary and unfair but I can see why some anti-fraud criteria are needed. Imagine if the 'on payroll 28 Feb' rule wasn't there and you were an unprincipled small employer - you could put all your family and friends on payroll the day after the scheme was announced, immediately furlough them and pay them 80% if whatever your notional salary was, in effect acting as a pipeline for money to travel from the treasury to people whom you had no intention of employing in normal times.

When the grants end, the unprincipled employer would terminate them with < 2 years service and no redundancy cost. You might say 'that would never happen' but there would be some. This is emergency payment, employers need it yesterday to stay solvent, so no chance to investigate or audit claims - the only choice is an arbitrary rule.

Unfortunately that rule will disadvantage anyone genuinely moving jobs or starting work after 28 February - more people than you might think. A very rough estimate, employee population say 20 million (working pop is 30 million plus but that will include self employed, 'workers' and the like), labour turnover 6% so 0.5% change jobs every month, so c.100,000 people may have taken up new job offers in March and their employer won't get paid to furlough them. A fairer rule would be 'in work or holding a job offer on 28 February' but backdated job offers are far to easy to create.

I'm afraid I can't offer any useful suggestions much as I would like to. I have no relevant state benefits expertise, sounds like Universal Credit might be the only route for them. Hopefully someone else on this forum can chip in.

.