Voluntary redundancy

An employer may ask for volunteers to avoid making compulsory redundancies. There is no obligation to ask for volunteers, and failing to do so will not normally make compulsory redundancies unfair (Rogers and others v Vosper Thornycroft [1989] IRLR 82).

There is no obligation to apply the selection procedure when accepting employees for voluntary redundancy and an employer is not obliged to accept people who put themselves forward. Terms for voluntary redundancy are usually, but need not necessarily be, better than those for compulsory redundancy.

As long as there is a genuine redundancy situation when an employer invites volunteers, voluntary redundancies will be treated as dismissals in the same way as compulsory redundancies. However, someone choosing to take voluntary retirement should take care. For example, in Birch & another v University of Liverpool [1985] IRLR 165, the Court of Appeal ruled that employees who accepted early retirement in the face of a threat of compulsory redundancy had ended their contracts by mutual consent.

Voluntary redundancy policies must not discriminate unlawfully against particular groups, such as part-time workers, young workers or disabled employees. In the public sector, reps should remember the Public Sector Equality Duty (see page 194). Where employees volunteer for redundancies, reps should take care that they are not volunteering because they believe they will not get a fair chance at available jobs due to discrimination. In Derby Specialist Fabrication v Burton [2001] IRLR 69, the EAT held that an employee who had chosen to volunteer for redundancy for that reason could claim constructive discriminatory dismissal.