Re: redundancy at minimum or minimum redundancy
I've read the judgement so we can all stop speculating.
WiPro provided Unix systems that supported three council services. The council transferred one service to OLM Systems and the other two to Northgate. These two, the sysadmin and DBA, spent all their time directly working on those systems.
WiPro and the council maintained they were transferred to Northgate, with the service (how Northgate chose to provide that service was irrelevant). Northgate disagreed. As both organisations were refusing to take responsibility for their contracts of employment they claimed unfair dismissal, a redundancy payment and pay in lieu of notice, naming WiPro, the council and Northgate.
As nobody is employing them, it cannot be disputed that they were dismissed. The question the judge has just answer is who dismissed them?
Since there was no proper procedure the dismissal is unfair, and Northgate's legal counsel will now be busy trying to reduce the liability. If Northgate has any sense it will now try to settle the case.
In the meantime the two people should have got new jobs - they're under a duty to mitigate their loss, and failing to do so would give Northgate an argument for reducing the amount of the claim.