About Bloody Time!

So, almost at the end of the day yesterday I got an email from the boss marked "Redundancy Warning": next Tuesday morning a meeting has been set to discuss my exit from this job. I felt so relieved. Of course they're going to try to wriggle out of paying me any compensation so I'm trying to find someone with experience and gravitas to be my advocate at the meeting. Sadly the people I know who would do this brilliantly are in London.

 Previous redundancies in this organisation have been instant and clumsy. I have no reason to expect anything different. I am torn between making the appropriate preparations so that the negative effects of my departure will be minimised and just leaving them to work it out for themselves.

 I have been reflecting on how different this might have been had my boss shared with me the decisions of the Board of Trustees to terminate my contract when it was made in February. They honestly thought I would stay for another year as their caretaker and be happy about it! Had they not tried to hide the decision from me and worked with me to create a planned and organised exit, everything would have been so much better. My frustration grew to the point of taking two weeks off for stress- though it wasn't ME who was at risk!

 Memories of my redundancy from the LLGC:  a brilliant friend of my partner's who negotiated on behalf of Unison members at Camden Council dealt with it all for me and got a lot more than I would have accepted without his support. It was amusing to observe the Chair of the board ("Tricky Dicky") calling his reps out to discuss their response to every sentence uttered by my advocate. I don't have an immediate ideas of who could do this for me here, but I am looking.

 I don't intend to claim state assistance, but one of the reasons for holding out for redundancy rather than resigning is that it is interpreted as intentionally making oneself unemployed and therefor ineligible for state support for (last time I looked) six weeks. I need to spend time today researching law and procedure around redundancy.

 I feel 'lighter' already :-)

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