PCS Wins FTA Redundancy Compensation Employment Tribunal

The following has been supplied by PCS HQ:

PCS took DWP to an Employment Tribunal (ET) to secure redundancy compensation for our FTA members who were dismissed when their FTA contracts were ended after two or more years of qualifying service. The tribunal has this week reported its decision and has found in PCS’ favour.

Fantastic Outcome
This is a fantastic outcome for PCS. The compensation should in total be worth over a million pounds. PCS had always argued against the dismissal of the FTA staff, arguing instead that all of them should have been converted into permanent staff to deal with the excessive workloads DWP faces. While we were able to achieve permanent contracts for some FTA’s it was not possible to do so in many cases. But we were determined to ensure that, where FTA staff were dismissed, then they received their due redundancy compensation

Lead cases
PCS used two volunteer FTA members as ‘lead cases’ to take the case to the tribunal on behalf of the hundreds of FTA members of PCS who were dismissed after two or more years qualifying service. The GEC would like to thank the two members who agreed to be our ‘lead cases’ for making this victory possible.

Confident we would win
If DWP had accepted its obligations from the start there would have been no need to go through the time and expense of legal action. But PCS was always confident that we had a strong case and that we would win. Now that we have won the tribunal we expect DWP to accept the verdict and pay the redundancy compensation to all of the FTA staff who are entitled to it.

Dismissals were redundancies
The tribunal decision centred on the question of whether the dismissal of an FTA by DWP at the end of their contract was a dismissal on the grounds of redundancy or a dismissal for ‘some other substantial reason’. PCS consistently argued that these dismissals were redundancies and therefore the FTA’s were entitled to a redundancy compensation payment in line with the provisions of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. The tribunal has now confirmed that these dismissals were indeed redundancies.

The Civil Service Compensation Scheme says that “as long as the fixed term employee has at least two years qualifying service and is being dismissed for redundancy, they will receive the same compulsory compensation terms as a permanent member of staff.” Broadly speaking this compensation amounts to one month’s pay for each year of qualifying service.

DWP’s Response
In the light of the ET decision, PCS has contacted DWP management to confirm that they will now act in accordance with the tribunal’s decision and pay the redundancy compensation. We are awaiting their confirmation of how and when they will do this. As soon as we have more information on this we will keep branches and members informed.