Redundancy fill jobs with agency staff

[cptjacksparrow]

I work for a company that has many employees on different terms and conditions + pay scales and for the last 18 months they have been trying to bring in harmonisation which has been stopped by our union {to many conditions attached} so how in an attempt to bring in harmonisation through the back door they are planning on making a lot of people redundant and filling their jobs with agency staff, then I am guessing after a period of time they will re advertise the jobs with the new terms and conditions ect
My first question is it legal to pay someone off then fill their position with agency staff full time / or part time?
secondly if I am paid off is there a time limit on how long they have to wait before advertising the job position I had without having to offer me my job back with my exiting conditions?

[buildersmate]

Phew! Can't answer all of that in 2000 words.
Redundancy occurs when work ceases to exist in a defined area of the company.
To a certain extent, companies can play tunes on the 'defined area' bit by, for example, putting a group of people into an area, stating that the work done in that area isn't needed any more and declaring redundancies. Unions are wise to that and it probably wouldn't be straightforward in your company.
Clearly company business activity can go up as well as down, so it is perfectly OK to re-recruit new staff after redundancies. However, since the period by which a claim at an Employment Tribunal for unfair dismissal must be made within 3 months of the dismissal occurring, every company that knows what it is doing will not re-recruit staff - either temps or permanents until at least 3 months period has occurred.
You are most unlikely to get your job back on the existing (current) conditions if this ever came about.

[cptjacksparrow]

Thanks you very much for your answer.
it’s made things a little clearer now, the company which I work for maintain the railway infrastructure and they are planning on making 1800 people redundant on the west coast main line then keeping up with maintence with agency staff as things go none compliant very quickly {in fact it’s not uncommon to get workloads that are out of date} and as a direct result it will affect the general public as trains cannot run on none compliant tracks ,so there is no way they can allow that to happen as it will cost them hundreds of thousands of pounds so that’s where the agency staff {the people they have been trying to get rid of for the last 3 years by taking all the work back in house} come in to maintain the infrastructure for the 3 or 4 months then re advertise the jobs and cross their fingers that the majority of people come back on the new terms and conditions as it can take 2-3 years to train for some of the maintenance positions that will be affected {and there you go harmonisation brought in by the back door}

[cptjacksparrow]

Ummmm just picked up on something that you have mentioned.
Quote...
{Redundancy occurs when work ceases to exist in a defined area of the company}
surely the company would have to stop all agency staff work in that defined are of work before it could make any one redundant {the reason why I ask is because there are hundreds of agency staff throughout the country working on the railway every day