OK, maybe this should be posted elsewhere, but I was made redundant on Friday and since then I have asked three times for the criteria used in selection.

I finally received a reply from my director this evening, and I really didn't know whether laugh, cry or be bewildered.

Anyway, one of the criteria used was 'age'

I'm 41 btw.

I've only worked for them for 11 months so as far as I know, no selection criteria needed to be supplied to me.

I do, my question is the length of service, does it matter?

My understanding is you cannot claim for unfair dismissal with less than a years service. A list of 'unfair dismissal' conditions is outlined in s.105 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

If you feel that your dismissal is classed as unfair (as detailed in ERA) you can submit a claim and ET will decide.

Its a tough pill to swallow my friend.

Redundancy is a very funny thing to work with (if thats not a contradiction). It is not the person its the role that is made redundant therefore last in first out does not hold any creditability as far as redundancy is concerned. If your duties still remain the job remains. This is often overcome by spreading the duties over several other posts thereby reducing the need for the job concerned. If you have less than 12 months service you are onto a loser as any redundancy is based upon status not on the duties. Sorry but it seems they are quite right to say that your job has gone, but redundancy seems to be incorrect because of lack of service, anyway the costr to the company is very small (about one weeks pay) and is probably not worth worrying about as far as the company is concerned. Not good news i'm afarid but it is a tough world these days.

TFCSM, if you go on to the link about redundancy selection, you will see quite clearly that using age as part of their selection process is not allowed and therefore you have been unfairly dismissed.
You have a very good case to take to an Employment Tribunal, I would seek professional legal advice ASAP as there are strict deadlines that have to be met to be successful.
All the very best.
Sean

Cheers for all the replies.

I have just been on the phone with ACAS and because my former employer has been kind enough to shoot themselves in both feet by using age as a selection criteria, and then putting that in writing, this is direct discrimination and therefore length of service is not important.

I can submit a tribunal claim, but first of all I will see what they have to say when I confront them with the evidence. I might even drop in to the conversation about my buddy who writes for Construction News ;-)

I agree with Sean, i was made redundant on the 32 December, i just walked away as what ever i said fell on deaf ears, all the company did was transfer my role to others to save a wage at the end of the day. But the the other roles already had a 100% role if that makes sense for those that have questioned this kind of thing before, does it make sense that someone with a full time role of 100% then takes on 50% of someone else?? i was not that good at maths at school but 100 plus 50 adds up to more than a full time role in my mind? maybe wrong

An interesting case of 'last in first out'... Rolls Royce V Unite The Union

http://www.beachcroft.co...cle.aspx?id_Content=1008

As I understand it, (I'm no HR expert however) last in-first out can be used as a criteria, if a role requires experience to undertake, and those with more service have greater experience (for the obvious reasons). I think a caveat to this being that all other options must have been exhausted initially.

However, as this appears to be a case of age discrimination. I think that Last in-First out apppears to be a smoke screen anyway.

quite right typo there should have been 31 Dec, don't want to work for them again, not a good experience overall, played a lot of lip service but did very little to follow much through, possible reason why i got selected for redundancy, tried too hard at doing the best job possible with very limited support and resources.

regards