Posted: December 14th, 2015

Case Study – The Law of Redundancy

Task 2:  Employment Law (50% weighting); 2000 words, excluding appendices and references.

Case Study – The Law of Redundancy

Following on from the themes you will have explored in answering the economics content of this assignment, you are now required to consider a hypothetical problem occurring in a fictional company, Wolsey Engineering Ltd. Even though this is a hypothetical case, you are still encouraged to make use of knowledge and experience gained from working in your own organisation and from considering its position in the economy, when approaching the task.

Wolsey Engineering Ltd is a small private company that has been established in the Ipswich area for 45 years. The company has been concerned with designing, producing and installing security gates for homes and businesses in the areas surrounding Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. It has employed designers and electrical engineers for producing the security systems, which are fitted to the gates of residential and commercial clients at their premises by a team of installers. The installers have been responsible for fitting the security devices at the premises of the company’s clients and ensuring that the system works satisfactorily before leaving the site. Owing to the increasing complexity of organising the installations operations, the company has decided to cut down on the scope of its activities and to concentrate solely upon the design and production of security systems to client specifications and to contract out the installation projects. One of the consequences of this decision is that there will no longer be a need for the installers, some or all of whom may have to be dismissed. The employees concerned are as follows:

• Adam, who is 60 and has worked for the company for 20 years;
• Brenda, who is 42 and has worked for the company for 1 year and 10 months;
• Chris, who is 27 and has worked for the company for 9 years

Chris is someone who has been recognised by the company as having the potential to be a gifted designer and the company would like to offer him alternative employment in that capacity, instead of making him redundant.  50%

The company would like to know what steps they need to take in order to dismiss the relevant employees fairly on the grounds of redundancy. The company would also like to know how to go about offering the alternative employment to Chris and what principles of law apply to that process.

Advise the company on these matters.