Is this redundancy?

LegacyUser

Yo

Currently work in an IT role with 19 months service, 6 months ago there was a wave of redundancies in my dept, my employer got rid of four other staff and only kept me but also reduced my work to three days and said it would be on a temporary basis for 3 months, so was doing the whole dept work in less time! I agreed to this because a job is better than no job. I requested my full time position back after the 3 months but was told no even tho I could demonstrate that my workload was more than 3 days worth, then a month ago they told me that they are going to outsource my position to a subcontractor and that they would contract me as a subcontractor, but I will lose all of my employment rights and benefits if I do this, and will be on a lot less money as well. Can they make me redundant if my job effectively still exists?

RangeR

I may not be fully correct but if they make you redundant, they cannot fill that position for a few months. I believe that if the company want to put a "cheaper" person into your position, they have to sack you. They can't sack you without good cause.

seamus

Basically, they can outsource your job and make you redundant. Outsourcing means that they're paying a vendor to do a job for them. This vendor is not part of their company and basically provides a service for a set fee, the same way that any vendor relationship works.

This is a very common way of making people redundant. If the work you do is outsourced to a contractor, then your job is no longer required and you can be made redundant.

Offering to subcontract you back into your old position is a bit of a dirty trick, but you might end up doing well out of it. For a start, regardless of whether they hire you back to subcontract, they are required to comply with redudancy regulations, which may include statutory payments to you.
In addition, you need to look after yourself in terms of tax, PRSI and holidays. That is, at the moment your employer manages your PAYE, PRSI (and other levies) and are required to give you holidays. As a contractor, you're effectively self-employed and will need to manage these things yourself. So although you may get paid (for e.g.) €30k per year by your employer currently, you may need to charge them €35k a year as a subcontractor in order to maintain the salary that you're earning now. It depends on how your sums work out.

But basically, yes it's perfectly legal, but a pretty dirty trick.

avs0020

You may want to look into the regulations of Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE). Good luck

Nody

Yes, all they need to do is change the job description to claim your position no longer exists and that they are now hiring for the new one instead.

If they outsource and keep it in Ireland the outsourcer has to take you on with the same contract as I recall (outside of Ireland you'll get nothing). Also because you're there for less then 24h months they don't have to give you any redundancy.

kmick

I would not get too hung up on the legalities of it. You are never going to have the legal resources to fight them and the payouts for unfair dismissal are very small. If it were me I would find a job elsewhere and then walk out the door and never come back. They are bound to give you a crap rate as a subby and you can be sure they will be constantly asking you to work overtime for nothing etc. The only power you have right now is the threat that without your management the systems may not run as smoothly as they are (and that is not a hint at sabotage or anything like that). Again I would have another job lined up before I made that point.