My partner is currently on maternity leave and has been advised that her role has been made redundant as part of a restructure of her department. She works for a large global Bank within a head office that employs people across many functions and discplines. Her dept has a number of vacancies at a higher job level than her current job level. She has been advised that the new roles are not suitable alternative vacancies. She has challenged her Employer on the grounds that no "suitable alternative vacancies" have been offered. Her Employer has challenged back saying that she has not identified any suitable vacancies that could have been offered. My question is where does the onus lie in finding a suitable alternative vacancy? Should the Employer proactively look to provide a list of potential vacancies and discuss this with the employee or is it up to the Employee to identify suitable vacancies and bring these to the attention of the Employer?

Hi Austin,

Firstly, congrats to you and your wife on the addition to your family.

You ask an interesting question for which there is no 'silver bullet' answer you can take back to your wife's employer.

At frst glance the law appears fairly straightforward on this issue - Regulation 10 Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999 requires an employer to offer any suitable alternative vacancy to an employee on maternity leave.  There is no requirement on an employee to ask, etc, the employer must actively notify her.

Your wife's employer is skirting around this issue by saying that as the roles available are senior in grade then they do not qualify as suitable alternatives - they are promotions.  This is a potentially dangerous game to play because if a tribunal were to rule against the employer on this issue then they have already discriminated against your wife on the grounds of her pregnancy.

I would (and do) advise any employer that if an employee potentially has the skill to undertake a role then in a scenario like this it is a suitable alternative and should be offered.

What you do next is entirely dependant upon how your wife views the situation.  I would suggest that a good starting point is for your wife to identify all the roles she is capable of carrying out and is qualififed to apply for.  She should then  tell the company that she considers them to be suitable alternatives to redundancy and see what happens.

What you do after that depends entirely on the company's reaction and what your wife wants to achieve.  If she is considering taking the issue further then she will have to lodge a statutory grievance and for that I would advise to seek more detailed advice at the time.

If you want any more advice on this one feel free to email me directly.

Hope it helps,

Dave