• Replies 14 replies
  • Subscribers 3 subscribers
  • Views 1958 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

Redundancy whilst furloughed

Sarah

I work for a medium sized company in manufacturing and unfortunately, our products are not considered essential. We had to shut the factory from the first day of the lockdown and furloughed factory staff from that day whilst office staff worked from home until the end of March and furloughed from 1st April. Out of almost 350 employees, only 16 are non furloughed. The factory shut was initially for 3 weeks ending after the Easter Monday bank holiday. However, we have had to extend this. It has now come to a point where unpleasant decisions will have to be considered ie redundancies.

My research so far is telling me that employees can be made redundant whilst on furlough. I wondered if anyone has any thoughts on this, especially the legality and ethical aspects.

Any feedback would be very much appreciated

Many thanks

Parents
  • It would be better for your cash flow to leave them on furlough and claim back their furlough pay, provided your business can make it through to May when the grants should start being paid - unless you are topping up to 100%. If you are topping up, I would go back to the workforce and ask them to agree to their pay dropping to 80% or £2,500 per month in order to save jobs.
  • in reply to Elizabeth Divver
    Hi Elizabeth, thank you so much for your prompt feedback...very much appreciated.
    We have 2 pay categories (weeklies & salaried staff). Weeklies - whose hourly rate is very close to the NLW - are being topped up to 100%. Salaried staff have been asked to take a 10% reduction which all have agreed to. I believe the reason behind the contemplation is cash flow. Our customers are in the same boat i.e. they sell non essential goods. So if they are not buying because they can't sell we basically can't sell either :(
  • in reply to Sarah
    If the staff, weeklies and salaried, know that the alternative is people losing their jobs, they may well agree to dropping to the lower of 80% or £2,500 per month.
Reply Children
  • in reply to Elizabeth Divver
    salaried staff already know that there will be a further reduction (20%) in May which has been accepted and I share your sentiments that a pay cut would be better than no pay at all. I am just mindful that as much as unprecedented times tend to bring out the best in people, the opposite can creep in sometimes :(. Fingers crossed it goes down well with the weeklies. Thanks again for your feedback