LOSING your job through redundancy is never easy. But it can seldom have been tougher than in the current financial climate where employment can be increasingly hard to find.

Those who lose their jobs in these times must worry about their prospects of finding a new position quickly. The only immediate financial buffer for many who are made redundant is the prospect of a redundancy pay-out.

It seems particularly hard then for those who worked in the Victoria Lane premises of retail chain Ethel Austin in Huddersfield who were made redundant and got nothing.

Twenty Huddersfield staff were among 1,700 nationwide whose cases were taken up by shopworkers’ union USDAW after administrators failed to consult with the union before making them redundant.

The union won at an employment tribunal but just 500 of the total workforce will share £1.5m compensation. Staff at 185 other Ethel Austin work places, including the store in Huddersfield, will not see a penny.

And the reason? Because the tribunal felt that the administrators were not obliged to consult about workplaces where fewer than 20 people were being made redundant.

It is a decision that the union takes issue with and quite rightly so.

Surely every worker should have the right to be consulted over their future employment irrespective of how small the workforce is? If they don’t have this right then it’s time the legislation was revisited.