Layoffs in the U.K.

UK Nortel Yahoo group stil hasn't responded after 4 emails in 3 weeks. No group listed if you search Yahoo UK groups either :-(

Monkstown RP1 claims currently being processed in Birmingham since 7th April, Belfast have still not received info yet so the cheques will be a long time coming yet!!

Can interested ex monkstown folk please sign up to a message service/discussion forum by sending a blank email to:-
nnuksevered-subscribe@yahoogroups.co.uk
as part of the sign up you will need to introduce yourself with a 200 word paragraph and a group moderator will then decide on admittance. It may be beneficial for Non-union to create consolidated tribunal submission.

Anyone who went from Monkstown could you please contact your local MP although the Uion is doing this there really needs to be pressure put on from non union people.
The more pressure the better it will be we really need people to listen to what happened

OK folks, heres the latest news.

It seems that all Nortel employees laid off in England this week would be able to act together in a combined claim in an English Industrial Tribunal, as long as all of those people were making the same claim, which of course we are. Those laid off in Northern Ireland would have to make a separate claim there, which I understand that the local union is going to do. What we need is the names and addresses of anyone wanting to take part in the English claim as their names have to be submitted as part of the Industrial Tribunal 'Multiple' claim form, this is in addition to the ET1 form form.

However anyone wanting to do this must make sure that they write to the administrator requesting payment for what they are owed. My understanding is that this should include pay for the 90 day consultation period, payment for holidays not taken and pay in lieu of notice (which will depend on your contract, but would normally be three months). Obviously you can only actually claim for money you are owed and that you have not been given by the government funded statutory redundancy pay, currently on £350 per week, where the number of weeks depends on your length of service. However as it if the company's contractual responsibility to pay you, I don't think you would have to do any calculations in order to write your letter. They know how much you are supposed to have been paid already, just ask them for your entitlement in terms of days, weeks or months.

Please pass this on to anyone else who may not be a regular user of AAN but who may have been impacted in the UK this week.

Techvet, I am thinking it may be possible to claim more than these things.
In this recession getting another job may take a long time. You can estimate what time that might be and file a claim for uppaid wages for it. The thing is compensation is for actual loss, which is more than just 90 days consultation period and 3 months notice. If you were paid 90 days plus 3 months salary you would still not be back where you were: you'd have no job and no income (just the dole).

How_Long, I am personally looking into claiming for other things myself due to my own personal circumstances, however these will be different for each person and require a different claim. As far as acting together is concerned that could only be for things that were common claims amongst all the claimants.

It would be nice to think that there was something that we could do that was 'punitive' but from the above, from what I have been reading I think the best that you could hope for (beyond what is discussed above) is an order to reinstate you, which is apparently relatively unusual.

If you have any other suggestions then Id be pleased to hear them.

Rgds

The Union will be taking up the case for al their members but the people who are not union members are also getting together to take an unfair dismissal case

HI pbj,

is this just for NI or are you aware of anyone organising in England too?

I spoke yesterday to a guy in England and he was looking to get together with some other people to help organise this i have forwarded his e-mail address to him
I also spoke to a guy this morning from England who is part of unite and apparently the two Regional Organisers are going to try and get together and see if anything can be done jointly

If we assume that it costs on average $30K per employee to keep them employed for the 90 day consultation period, then 228 * 30K = $6.84M. A mere snip compared with the $20M+ the execs are getting in bonuses by breaking the law to cut costs. My point is that the money is there, it just has some long thin greedy fingers reaching for it from a set of rotten to the core senior management. Ethics - I think we need to invent a new word. Nortel has smeared it.

How about 'Norals' (as in 'No Morals' or 'Nortel Morals') - but works quite well with Nortel

I'm one of the 228 people laid off in the UK this week and have been doing some investigating into what the legal position is. It appears that the company has indeed broken the law by 'failing to consult' and that we are fully entitled to make a claim at an industrial tribunal. We are also highly likely to win as, from what I can tell, this is a clear cut case and the judgement is likely be automatically in our favour.

However, I was not able to attend any of the meetings in person but would like to get in touch with people who were. From what I do know there seems to have been a high proportion of older employees and even people with illnesses or medical conditions. I suspect that there may even be a bias towards laying off people who were on the DB pension plan. As has been commented here before, E&Y will be old-hands at the process of screwing over employees and will know all the tricks. However if they have discriminated in the selection of employees then there may well be another claim that could be made on the basis of an unfair discrimination against these people.

The company is supposed to be legally obliged to inform the Consultative Committee of how many people, thier names, ages and reasons for dismissal, however as they have contrived not to hold any consultations I suspect that no-one has been told this information. I find this suspicous and that there is probably another ulterior motive other than just saving money, even if only to try to stop us acting together. If all of the people who were impacted acted together then there may well be a way of taking some sort of 'class action' thereby saving us all a lot of time and effort. Of course E&Y will be counting on us being intimidated by the Tribunal process in the expectation that most people will just let them get away with it.

It has also been commented here about the chances of getting any money out of the company as they are in administration. I have yet to get a clear answer on this but I suspect that 'protection from creditors' may not apply to legal fines. In this case we may well be able to 'send in the baliffs' and take possession of goods to the value of whatever the fine is.

HI Techvet, at the moment i'm holding off on sending in the "RP1" form as I definitely do want to take to tribunal - as i'm sure you know question 57 on the RP1 asks ..."give the date you complained to an industrial tribunal". Anyway, there is a growing ex-monkstown group interested in the tribunal/legal path. Are we permited to share email addresses on this forum ?

If it can be proven that discrimination occurred then the award from a Tribunal becomes unlimited. Otherwise there is a limit (per employee) or something around £60k.

Hi there,

Obviously the AAN forum is an open public forum and as such is also viewable
by E&Y. Obviously anything posted there could give them a head's up on who
is planning to do what, which strategically may not be a good idea. I
thought long and hard before making my posting but I couldn't see any other
way of trying to get people to get in touch with each other. I understand
that there is a list of names posted on the Nortel Intranet at

http://wiki.us.nortel.com/bin/view/Main/ListOfPeopleDeparted

but I don't have access anymore. If you know anyone who can get hold of it
it would be useful.

Are you aware of anyone else who is actively trying to organise? I
understand that there was one person at the Maidenhead meeting who seemed to
be taking a lead. If you know who that is it would help too.

As to Monkstown, I spoke to the UNITE regional organiser Terry Collins.
Unfortunately he is on bereavement leave at the moment but he still took a
lot of time to talk to me. He assured me that UNITE would be filing a claim
of 'failure to consult' on behalf of its members in Monkstown at the local
Industrial Tribunal. However the rules for these things are different in NI
compared to England and we would not be able to piggy back on that claim, we
would have to make our own seperate claim in England. Most people at
Maidenhead were not in a union and therefore would have to take out their
own claim. Obviously if we were all to act independently it would take us
all a lot of time and effort that perhaps could be saved if we acted
together. Similarly if we were all to act together when it came to
recovering our money through the county court then any costs incurred could
be spread out between us.

All the best

This is shocking and despicable and not even logical from a cold objective business viewpoint. I am ashamed to be associated with this “company” or whatever you call it now.

One can only surmise from an action like this that NT is indeed headed for a quick sale of major assets and then on to Chapter 7. There is obviously no more concern for the reputation and name of the company

UK do not get a package

Wow ... very clear that Nortel is not a Wolrdclass Company anymore ...they are using a third party ( E&Y ) to help them to layoff people.... there is no more Worldclass Top Mgmt at Nortel anymore...
What is the next step ? E&Y people will layoff people directly ???
If I will be in this Maidenhead yesterday I will ask for proof in writing that E&Y are fully mandated by Nortel to do this....
Anyway looks like there is different way to layoff the remaining 5,000 people...
So the 70,000 previous one from Y2K-Y2K8 were the winning one !

WTF is wrong with Nortel anyway.
You read articles on here about how ex employees from U.K, Asia and even U.S will likely get something rather than end up with nothing like the average
ex employee schmuck from Canuckistan who stands in line with the rest of the unsecured or secured creditors, paying a lawyer money and when its over they'll end up in the red with either lawyer fees or sanity.
They'll come out of this with nothing. File as many claims as you want.
Is Nortel not a Canadian Company.
Should not canadians be benefitting the most from this.
Should not Canadians be the most protected.
Disgusting and Pathetic. Harper, McSquinty, Manley.
You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.
Next time you vote Canada. Vote for somebody who will take care
of you first. Not this we are the world crap.
Take the bull by the horns and look after your own people first.
Typical Canadian. Appease and suck hole up to everyone but their
own for fear of offending or sounding intolerant.
Suckers and Doormats with the excpeption of soldiers and hockey players.

I was one of the laid of in Maidenhead yesterday. It's academic in a way and I'll certainly be focusing on the real world outside the company now but to illustrate the contempt that Nortel management hold for employees here are a few highlights of yesterdays session:

- Approx 90 people assembled in a large badly laid out room. A cluster of shifty looking individuals hung around a trestle table with piles of envelopes. No one arriving was greeted or acknowledged.
- An Ernst & Young employee kicked off the session - hardly audible since no one had bothered with the expense of a PA system for this large group. Only when asked did it transpire that most of those present were E&Y staff. Much later in the session and only when she was forced to intervene did it turn out that the EMEA HR Director was one of the group.
- The groundswell of anger from the audience was palpable and before the E&Y speaker had got more than a few words out a member of the audience read a detailed statement spelling out the illegality (in UK law) of the process and that
he was taping the session and intended further action.
- The sparked a chorus of approval and many more angry comments and questions. Clearly what HR and E&Y had thought would be a smooth process was anything but and they suffered over the next 40 minutes a thorough verbal beating from the audience.
- E&Y admitted after much pushing that they were deliberately breaking UK law
in not applying a 90 day consultation period. Cheaper to do this and pay a fine than to pay employees their legal right.
- This peaked with a call for police intervention and to local press. General descent in chaos.
Of course E&Y with Nortel HR hiding behind their substantial coat tails will know every legal wrangle to stomp on severed employees, but there was a certain bitter pleasure in seeing them and HR confronted face on with the effects of Nortel's deeply cynical actions.
I was only a short time with the company and have only lost my job and three months notice and consultation period. There were many in the room who have lost far more - one a 30 year employee. This experience and that of the last 3 months put the final seal for me confirming Nortel as a morally bankrupt organization. I'm glad to be rid of it.

I was at the same meeting and completely agree with the summary above. I at least received a call from my manager on Thursday evening warning me what was about to happen - some people only received an email from E&Y requiring them to attend a "mandatory" meeting to "discuss the restructuring process".

The first time they heard they were to be made redundant was when the E&Y rep began speaking. Many people could not believe that a company ostensibly so committed to ethics could treat long serving-employees in such a way. The HR rep was invited to comment on the ethics of allowing E&Y to break the law because it was cheaper than carrying out a 90 consultation period as required by UK Law - there was no reply. One man said bitterly "Perhaps I'll try that line when the police catch me stealing groceries from the supermarket - sorry officer, I couldn't afford to pay for them, so that's ok isn't it?"

After 16 years I am glad that I am no longer part of what Nortel has become. I hope that all of my former colleagues are now in no doubt about how they wil be treated when (not if) it is their turn. What a terrible way to treat decent, long-serving, loyal staff. Zafirovski and co - you should be ashamed (though I am sure you are not)

If i'm the unsecured creditor then no interest, however, if I get the difference between statutory and contract amounts from the uk government and they then become the unsecured creditor i'd be very interested...

I´d say that the UK entity as a whole (or is that a hole?) laid off 300 people today.

OK hands up they broke the law. Take em to court and then what? Join the queue of creditors and wait for cents in the dollar.

All this while our execs claim their deserved bonus, for what I´m not quiet sure as they obviously dont know how to manage a company. But hats off to then they know how to steal every penny they can.

How_long, i'm ex-monkstown today and would love to take this to tribunal. i think there were 87 let go in monkstown. Do you know whether that gets them around the 100 number you mentioned or is it the consolidated uk number today that is important ? -any advice appreciated...

The 87 applies to "a site", though apparently the definition of a site has been stretched to include closeby sites all lumped together. From what I've heard all teleworkers who are loosely based on, say Harlow, would all be included in the number allocated to the Harlow site. It may even get Harlow and Maidenhead lumped together, though from what I hear that may not be necessary.
There is a legal requirement to consult whatever the number of staff affected, but the smaller the number the smaller the time required. I think, though don't quote me, that for 87 people it would be 60 days.

How_long,

please have a look at:-
http://www.emplaw.co.uk/researchfree-redirector.aspx?StartPage=data%2f09700801.htm

do u think this is a decent basis for attempting a "Compensatory" tribunal award ?

I don't think a compensatory award can be claimed from the government as the basic award can. So you can win and then have to stand in line for payout.
The only good side is that employment tribuals are set up to allow someone to represent themselves, and in such a blatant case as this very likely the individual will win. Probably still worth doing as a few percent is still something.

I still think that Monkstown would be a separate site as far as the 100 is concerned, but as they didn't so consulation at all then probably irrelevant.

i think if fact its classed as a UK number rather than a site number. So as the total UK wide is over 100 then it needs to be 90 days.

400 or 500 people at a 34 acre sounds like an enormous waste, like their Brampton headquarters of acreage turned ghost town before they sold to Rogers for $100M.

Wasn't Monkstown one of the area's Flextronics took off the list when they sold manufacturing too.

Ongoing cuts in an effort to restructure are still no where deep enough to catch up to the catalyzing death spiral.

Bonus driven theatrics before the rest are let go or transferred under the trustee's fire sale to the highest bidder I suspect, than axe all burden now with no plan.

fl

The situation in the UK is NOT the same as in the US. When administrators are appointed in the UK then they actually take over the running of the company and tell the company what is going to be done. They have taken a cynical calculated risk by ignoring the 90 day consultation. We can go to a tribunal in the UK but it is likely (according to my lawyer) that the Tribunals will put the claims on hold until they see whether Nortel goes bankrupt or comes out of administration. If Tribunals eventually find in favour of individuals then all that happens is that we will go to the bottom of the unsecured creditors pile and maybe get a penny in the pound at some unspecified date in the future. Welcome to the new brutal Nortel.
PS I should change my log in to read ex- worn out nortel employee!!

Yes the situation isn't the same in th UK. But surely if Nortel ARE trading as a solvent company (yes they are in Administration but they are still solvent) then any people being laid of f NOW shouldn't go on a unsecured creditors list (post Tribunal) as Nortel should fulfil its contractual obligations to both employees and suppliers while it is in administration....interesting.....

If any one in the UK gets a categorical answer on this then I'm sure we would all appreciate knowing. Certainly would be more useful than the ambigously worded E&Y employee FAQs. Maybe some of the Monkstown folks can get a view from a union representative. In Nortel we all signed up for the new post unionised world of mutual respect that has just been ripped up and trampled all over.

Check out www.halliwells.co.uk/newsletters/pdf/321.pdf

I read somewhere else but cannot immediately find it that a tribual will hear cases of a company in Adminstration, and in some cases can order reinstatement or award a larger award becasue dismissals are unfair that you can claim from the state and then the state becomes a creditor of the company. When I find it I'll post the URL.

Thanks How_long. In lieu of any other forum to discuss these things I suggest we use this blog to try and collectively get to the bottom of this and also the truth about UK notice pay entitlements. Assuming Mark doesn't mind ;-)

The UK govt has a site that tells you quite a few things:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Pay/DG_10026695

There is some more detail in:
http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/pdfs/guidanceleafletspdf/guideforemployees.pdf

There is UK employment law advice at
http://www.employmentlawlive.co.uk/tribunals_employment_law_UK.php
Acas have a set of info as well:
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1411

I hope these help. I've only done a small amount of searching around, and will continue in the coming days.

I was laid off from Monkstown on Monday too. I had a session with local Managers on Tuesday (although i reported offsite) and what I got from that was to screw the company for every penny we could.

I'm told that the best people to contact in NI are the Labour Relations Agency in Belfast. That's for NI, i'm not sure what the equivalent is in GB. They're supposed to have people who know the employment laws, better than Citizens Advice apparently.

I'm going to get some legal advice too because I distinctly remember the administrator saying on one of those calls that Administration protected Nortel from debts dated before the administration filing and that debts occurring after that date had to be paid. That suggests that a tribunal award would have to be paid in full, and not just become another addition to the list of creditors. But I'm no lawyer, and I'm sure E&Y had legal advice before they decided to screw us over, so maybe that's a red herring.

The other thing I want to query is that E&Y now effectively run the company and it was they who made these decisions, not Nortel. They're not in administration, perhaps they could be targeted directly. But they probably have legal cover by "acting as agents of Nortel" or some such.

Speaking of "tidying up for an acquisition", NT is also laying off ~25% of ppl in China. Both the GDNT JV and Beijing corporate sites are about equally impacted.

Based on what source?

Will terminated Nortel employees in the PRC get severance since NT has not petitioned for bankruptcy in Asia?

Their salarie is about 500-1000 US$ per month. So i don't think NT cannot pay their severances with its current cash position.

I think Nortel has money to pay severances for all the employees in PRC. However, $500~$1000 is even lower than what Huawei offers to their employees, actaully the employees in BJ lab get ~15000RMB per month in average. Now USD:RMB is 1:7, in average, it is about 2100USD. Let's say the average sverance is 6 months salary (5 +1), if Nortel wants to layoff 500 people in PRC, then Nortel needs to pay 6.3M USD. It is not a big number comparing to the KEIP/KERP.

sounds like a deal is coming soon. possibly these jobs will not go to the acquisition.

They (E&Y) know they are breaking the UK employment law - they, and with Nortel's understanding/consent, have chosen not to honour the notice period/consultancy period and will instead take the fine that they will recieve for this illegal act - apparently it is cheaper to break the law than paying (ex)employees their contractual rights

This isn't really surprising then. Nortel management will do whatever they think they can get away with. Look at the recent example of how they tried to get US employees to sign away their right to severance by creating a false dilemma between severance and pension, hoping to trick or pressure people into accepting one or the other simply because of their financial hardship that Nortel helped create.

This is yet another example of that same sentiment.

The best I can spin it this is that its the NYSE's - i.e. the US' - fault for breaking its own rules by allowing sub-$1 NT stock to remain on its list for longer than 30 days (for oil and profit), thereby encouraging others to follow the imperialist ethic of "the make 'em to break 'em (for oil and profit)"

have you really read the rules? After 30 days they are supposed to be given notice (like it happened) not delisted, afaik.

Rumor persisted that Nortel was gonna get a longer than yerr average 30 day warning, because Nortel was special:

December 11, 2008

The day after a Wall Street Journal piece mentioned a potential bankruptcy filing, Nortel announced it received a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange.

Nortel's stock has closed under a dollar per share during the last 30 consecutive trading days ending December 9.

Under NYSE rules, the company has six months from the date of notice (December 11) to bring up its average common share price back above a dollar. If the share price doesn't improve, Nortel says it will consider a "consolidation" - i.e. a reverse split - during its annual 2009 meeting in the spring.

It took them less than six weeks to declare Ch11, saying they needed more than six months to restructure. Screw any fancy reverse split:

JANUARY 15, 2009

Nortel Networks Files for Chapter 11


"Ohhhh, 'special' as in 'Special Olympics'. " - BObama

obviously the entire layoff process in UK has been carried out by the hangmen of E & Y, since none of the Bonus-pampered Nortel Manager had had the balls to step for these kind of news in front of the employees

In China PRC,Enterprise will be layoff about 90%,only left two Engineer and 8 sales,

Laws?...... what... you're kidding right. NT is BANKRUPT!!! in the UK too. Under similar creditor protection as in the US and Canada. They don't have to follow the same laws/guidelines as Union/Labor organization or a Right to Work State.... some folks on the blog don't seem to get it. NT can do as they please to reduce cost and debt.... Those great labor laws in Canda and UK only apply to a solvent company. NT is dead... they creditors are just trying to find the right sized nails to seal the coffin.

its newtownabbey not Newtownberry

Final obit: "Nortel closes its Dingleberryferry plant"

Nortel doesn`t care about laws anymore...
And FOCUS at the top is to maximize KEIP !
Don`t try to perform revers engineering about any Nortel`s decisions these days !

Unless they also applied for some type of Creditor protection in the UK I don't see how they can ignore local labor laws in that country. I am not saying it didn't happen, just that they should legally be on the hook. AFAIK Nortel only applied for creditor protection in North America.

As I know, They already filed Creditor protection in UK.

th

There is also supposed to be a consultation period with employee representatives. This is UK employment law that is now being broken

Nortel in the UK went into Administration in January, at much the same time as it filed for Ch 11 and in Canada.
However, even in Administration, UK employment protection still applies as the companty is still continuing to trade.
This law states that if more than 100 are being made redundant then a 90 day period of consulation with employee representatives must take place.
If it hasn't taken place, as seems to be the case here, then employees can take Nortel to an industrial tribual. The tribunal can order Nortel to reinstate the employee.
I'd advise all affected to keep a written record of all commmunications from and with their employer as it could form useful evidence if they want to go to a tribunal.
Seems like Nortel thinks it is immune from the law - unusal?