Employment Law Advice

YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYER

What happens if I am offered a new position?
Working out my length of service
What happens if my employer cannot pay?

What happens if I am offered a new position?

Employers are under a duty to consider suitable alternative positions before formally making you redundant. You may well not be entitled to a payment if you are offered a new position with the same employer, an associated employer or an employer who takes over the business. But if the new job is with the same or an associated employer you will only lose the redundancy payment if the new job is offered before your old employment contract expires, and starts within four weeks.

If you are offered a new job in this way you are entitled to put off the decision whether or not to accept it by having a four-week trial period. If you need retraining, the trial period may be extended beyond four weeks by written agreement between you and your employer. If at the end of the trial period you are still in the job, you will be considered to have accepted it.

If the new job is not a suitable alternative to the old one (because of differences in capacity, location and terms and conditions of the contract of employment) and you turn it down before the end of the trial period, you will be considered to have been redundant from the date your original employment ended. But if you refuse an offer of a job that is a suitable alternative and do not have a good reason, your employer may not be bound to make the redundancy payment.

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Working out my length of service:

The maximum number of years continuous service that can be counted for statutory redundancy payments purpose is 20. Length of continuous service is counted backwards fromm the last day of the notice period given by your employer. If not enough notice has been given, the outstanding time can be added on. The maximum number of continuous years service that can be included in the final calculation of payment is twenty.

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What happens if my employer cannot pay?

If your employer has problems so serious that making redundancy payments would damage the business, arrangements can be made by the Department of Trade (DTI) to pay you direct from the National Insurance Fund.

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