Employers and redundancy

I own my own small business and have recently wound up the company to become a sole trader. I employ 5 people and at present there is not enough work for all of us at one time so I have reduced everyones hours so that everyone works at least 2/3 days per week, including myself so that everyone gets some decent money, however, this was not done official as I have now found out that I should have sent out a form advising them that they were put on short time working, however I have now received a letter from the union about 3 of my employees stating that they now want redundancy.

I have been advised that to avoid this I need to give them 6 weeks full time work out of 13, this can be managed as I have just secured a short term contract for a few weeks, however since I got this letter a week ago, these people have decided that they do not want to come into work again and so hasnt showed up even though there is work there for them here. I have actually had to seek another person to help me at this time or the contract would have been lost. Bear in mind that this person is also on a verbal warning for his attitude.

My employees do not have a contract so is he entitled to anything? Bearing in mind that they have now let me down with this contract and refuse to come to work yet still wants to be made redundant, is there a way that I can dismiss him without being brought up in the ET and not give them redundancy?

Any advice would be welcome. Thank you.

First of all, you are obliged to give your employees a written statement of their terms & conditions within 2 months of their commencement. Your employees do have a contract, whether it is in writing or not, a contract of employment can be verbal.

When you put your employees on short-time, you should have issued them with a form RP9, but AFAIK, unless you have reduced their hours by more than half, then short-time does not apply.

To avoid paying them redundancy, you would have to offer them 13 weeks unbroken work within 4 weeks of the date they have requested a redundancy payment. You have one week to respond to the letter. How long have your employees been on short-time for? They can request redundancy after being on short-time for 4 weeks or more.

We recently had a similar situation and were advised by NERA that if we offered our employees 13 weeks unbroken work after a request of redundancy and they did not take it up that it was not a redundancy situation.

You may have a problem, most contracts would have a section detailing that lay off or short time can be imposed without agreement.

As for the RP9 Form "An employer may use Part A overleaf of this form to notify an employee of temporary lay off or temporary short time. It is not a legal requirement.
As for redundancy, you do not say how long you have employed the staff. Staff are only entitled to redundancy if the have 104 weeks service.