Last year I posted that I was helping someone with an employment tribunal issue. Date was set in January for June 8th and 9th 2010 so just a week to go.
Whilst there are many issues to address one part of case relates to a situation where there are just 2 employees in a department and employer decides to reduce this to one. They have a scoring system and 1 employee is selected. That employee has meetings to query the selection and the right to appeal. So the internal process and appeal takes place over about 5 weeks. Now the internal process was a complete sham and the employer did not make objective and independent enquiries about the claims of the person selected. Why?
But you can see that if they do uphold the appeal of the selected person they then have to go back to the other person and say sorry it is you not him. So he might of course then start an appeal weeks later. This would be a nonsense.
I presume that because of this complexity - no-one ever wins appeals in this situation and therefore that is why the employer pays lip service to company procedures. Effectively the system is fundamentally flawed.
If anyone has come across a situation where a selected employee wins an appeal and the other person (who originally thought they were safe) is then made redundant then I would be interested to hear.