Thanks Em! I am definitely overly shy with most things, but I'll ask about receiving 100% for the 3 months and see how it goes! It won't hurt to try at least

Hi Em, That's brilliant, thank you very much for all of your help with my questions and for the questions that I should be raising with my employer as well! At the moment I am leaning towards taking it even if it is the 80% figure for the 3 months rather than 100%, but yes it definitely did feel poor spirited reading that! I had been expecting to receive some new like this at some point because the work for my department has just completely gone at our firm now, but I felt a bit hurt by the furlough figure!

Hi HB, Thank you very much for your reply! I'll definitely check out the ACAS website now - I've used their helpline previously and it was a great help but I can imagine that the call centre is facing its fair share of problems at the moment!

Hi guys, I hope that you're all keeping well. I've been furloughed since 22nd April and I received a phone call from the managing director today stating that, due to the situation with covid-19, the firm is having to cut down on costs and are looking at making people redundant. I was told that I would be offered voluntary redundancy and that I wasn't the only employee that was going to be offered this. I was advised that I'd be paid for the three month notice period, would be given £300 for legal advice relating to a settlement agreement and would receive a payment of £2,000 at the end of the notice period. I was also advised that if I didn't accept the offer and was made redundant, I would just receive payment for the notice period. I've been employed by my firm for 3 years and 8 months and under my contract this means that my notice period will be the 3 month period as was stated. I've received an email this evening with a scanned letter that was attached from my employer and I've got a few questions relating to it. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated! 1. In setting out the terms for the proposal for voluntary redundancy, the letter says that whilst I will be paid at 100% for my outstanding holidays, I will only be paid at the 80% furlough figure for the 3 months of my notice period. Is this right? I was under the impression that, if I do accept redundancy, I should be receiving 100% of my pay as there was absolutely no mention of this being affected in the agreement to be furloughed (which was literally just a couple of lines long saying that I would be on furlough from 22nd April onwards, for at least 3 weeks and that I would not undertake work for my employer whilst on furlough). 2. The letter says that I am not allowed to discuss the contents of the letter with any other employee, aside from the managing director? Is this a normal inclusion? I would like to be able to discuss this with my head of department, who is my immediate manager, but the letter doesn't allow for this unfortunately! 3. The letter says that I need to let them know if I accept the proposed voluntary redundancy before 4:00 on Friday next week (the 26th). Given that I'd received the email at 6:00 today, that basically only gives me 4 working days to take advice on this and to consider my position. is there any form of minimum period that would be required as this seems like an awfully short period of time for consideration? 4. The letter doesn't mention at all what my position would be if I did not accept the offer and was eventually made redundant, shouldn't that be included? For lack of a better phrase, I feel like I've been shafted a bit with this! I received an email from my employer after the first 3 weeks of being on furlough just to confirm that I wasn't due to go back to work yet and have heard absolutely nothing from them until the phone call this afternoon. No mention or talk of redundancies anywhere until today. I don't know where I stand legally, but it just doesn't feel like this has been gone about the right way! Am I allowed to ask for more information about the redundancy process such as how many people would be made redundant and what the selection criteria would be? Thank you very much for taking the time to read this guys and thank you for any advice that you may have, it is greatly appreciated!

Thank you very much for your help guys! I can confirm that we are in pre-claim conciliation at the moment and I haven't contacted an employment tribunal as of yet (I will do so if the conciliation service doesn't resolve the issues though). I really appreciate you guys taking the time to read this and to look into everything for me. I will keep you all posted as things progress!

Hey guys, I hope everyone has been well and that you all enjoyed the festive season. Before I give an update as to where I am at the moment, I'd just like to say a massive thank you to ericsbrother for the help that he provided me with. You really helped me get my head around my contract and I can't thank you enough. So since I last posted, I have been in touch with ACAS and explained my matter to them. They assigned me an agent and a case number and we have had a couple of conversations where he has requested more information relating to my dismissal. I gave him a timeline of all the relevant events that led up to me being made redundant and informed him of what I was seeking to claim (the difference between what I was paid during the first year of my employment and the National minimum wage, the pay I should have been given for the additional 24 days notice that I was entitled to but not provided with, money for breaching contract and not following the law and damages for being unfairly made redundant. He then passed all this information on to my employer and we are now awaiting an official response. I say official response as I have heard from one of my friends who still works at the company in question that there is a rumour going around the office that I am going to be offered my job back to get me to stop pursuing claims against them and I was hoping to get a bit of advice regarding this. As much as I would like to finish off my apprenticeship to obtain my qualification, I do not think that I could go back to work for this company. I suffer quite badly from social anxiety and I don't think that I would be able to work in the same building (which feels like a toxic environment) knowing that they don't value me as an employee nor as a person and that they immediately treated me in a very nasty manner as soon as I asked to be paid the legal minimum. I don't think I could work effectively in this context and I don't believe that I could emotionally cope with it. I just wanted to know if I get offered my old job back, will it look bad on my part if I decline it? I know that it might affect any claim that they caused me to lose future earnings, but will it have a negative impact on anything else that I am contesting? Thank you very much for taking the time to read this guys; any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Thank you very much for all of the advice and the links that you have provided me with guys! I really appreciate all of your help. I've uploaded a scan of my contract for everyone to look at. I really hope everything is okay here as I'm very worried about everything at the moment!

I do have a contract from my employer that just says that my job title is "apprentice" and that my roles and responsibilities are to essentially do whatever the directors of the company thought was best for the business.

Thank you very much for your responses guys. I'm 23 years old and I'm not attending college. I didn't do as well as I would like in school / college so I've gone down the apprenticeship route to try and gain some more qualifications. My NVQ training and progress towards the qualification was provided by County Training which is ran by my local council. I've looked into the ET costs and I think that I would be able to get the fee reduced or waived as I have very little in savings and am now entitled to job seekers but I'd like to use it as a last resort and try and get everything resolved without needing to go to one. Everything has just seemed so wrong to me it feels like something can't be right. Literally 2 days after they realise I'm supposed to be earning more they make me redundant without notice. I feel like I've been punished for daring to ask to be made the legal minimum! Thank you so much for taking the time to respond though, I am very appreciative of all the help you have to offer!

Hi guys! This is my first ever post on here and I'm in desperate need of help. I was employed as an apprentice from June 2015 working towards my NVQ Level 2 in Customer Service. Originally, my NVQ was supposed to end in October 2016 but as my employer refused to let me work towards it (I was told that absolutely everything else in the office took priority over my NVQ work) the end date was extended by my NVQ assessor to October 2017. When my end date was extended, my NVQ assessor informed me that the minimum wage I was entitled to would have increased in June 2016 (after completing my first year of employment) and that my employer had been paying me below this amount for the past 4 months. My assessor told me that they would pass this information on to my manager and confirmed that they had done so via email. Four weeks passed with no mention of this at work at all. My NVQ assessor came into the office to help me get started on the next part of my course. At the end of the day, they asked me if anything had been said about my wage increasing and the money that I was owed. I confirmed that nothing had been mentioned. She went and had a word with my manager and came back and told me that my employer knows that they need to back pay me and that they were going to deal with it shortly. Two days later, my manager asked me to go to a one-to-one meeting where they confirmed that I was going to be back paid the amount of money that I was owed but that, due to a move-around in our department, my position no longer existed and that I would be out of a job this time next week. I was told that there were no problems with my performance, only that my role didn't exist anymore. A reshaping of our department had never been discussed, nor was I ever told that my role might not be there in the future. I was also only given 6 days notice when my contract said that I was entitled to a minimum of 3 weeks. Also, no-one else in the company has lost their job as a result of the reshuffle: I am the only person to have been negatively affected by this. I called ACAS and they told me to write down everything that I think my employer did wrong in a letter and then send it to my employer. The lady on the phone then said to wait 14 days and try to begin the early conciliation process. She told me that it sounded like what my employer did to me was illegal and I've gone through loads of other articles online posted by Law Firms which all seem to suggest that this I have been made redundant unfairly. I was just wondering what other people make of this? Has my employer acted wrongly and am I right in looking to escalate this? I'm really distressed due to the time of year where this has happened and I just want to make sure that I'm doing the right thing. Thank you all so much! Any help is greatly appreciated.