Childbirth and adoption — redundancy and alternative employment
[ch 5: page 57]Employees at risk of redundancy during maternity, adoption, additional paternity leave or (from 5 April 2015) shared parental leave, benefit from special rules regarding the need to offer suitable available employment.
The law says that where their role becomes redundant during the leave, they must be offered any suitable available vacancy. Dismissal as a result of failure to offer the vacancy will be automatically unfair.
The obligation to offer any alternative role is only triggered where:
• the employee’s role becomes redundant during the leave period;
• an alternative vacancy exists, either with the employer or any subsidiary or associate;
• the vacancy is suitable for the employee; and
• the terms and conditions are not substantially less favourable than their existing contract terms.
Shared Parental Leave
For babies born on or after 5 April 2015, additional paternity leave has been abolished and replaced with a new more flexible system of shared parental leave (SPL), available to employees with 26 weeks’ service.
Under regulation 39 of the new Shared Parental Leave Regulations, expected to become law on 1 December 2014, employees who are made redundant during SPL have the same right to be offered any suitable available vacancy as those made redundant during maternity leave.