Your employer has a legal obligation to select people for redundancy based on a fair process. Your employer can choose to make you redundant based on criteria like:
skills, qualifications or experience
standard of work
attendance record (excluding absences relating to disability, pregnancy or maternity)
disciplinary record
Your work can not select people for redundancy based on things like:
age
disability
gender reassignment
marriage or civil partnership status
pregnancy or maternity leave
Race
religion or belief
Sex
sexual orientation
family related leave – for example parental, paternity or adoption leave
role as an employee or trade union representative
membership of a trade union
Based on you having a part-time or fixed-term contract
Based on concerns you've raised about holiday entitlement or rest breaks
Based on concerns you've raised about not being paid the National Minimum Wage
These are examples of direct discrimination and they’re illegal.
Your employer also can’t select you for redundancy based on indirect discrimination, which means decisions that might seem fair at first glance, but actually discriminate against certain groups of people. For example, making someone redundant because they need to use flexible working more than other employees can be indirect discrimination, because women are much more likely to use flexible working due to childcare responsibilities.
If you have any questions about the information above and would like to speak to an Organise staff member directly, use this link to send us a message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.