Redundancy refers to circumstances where an employer no longer wants to have a particular job performed by anyone — in other words, that the job the employee was doing has ceased to exist.

An employee whose job has been made redundant may have an entitlement under statute, an industrial instrument or contract to redundancy or severance pay. This is in addition to any payment in lieu of notice which the employee may also be entitled to receive on termination of their employment.

See What is redundancy?

The National Employment Standards (NES) provide a statutory entitlement to redundancy pay for most national system employees, as set out in Pt 2-2 Div 11 Subdiv B of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act).

If a national system employee also has a right to redundancy pay under a contract of employment, award, agreement or other industrial instrument, or state legislation, these instruments remain applicable to the employee to the extent that they confer more generous redundancy terms than the minima set down in the NES.

An employer may apply to the FWC to reduce the amount of NES redundancy pay owing to an employee if:

• the employer obtains other acceptable employment for the employee; or

• the employer cannot pay the amount of redundancy pay required by the NES.

See Redundancy pay under the NES.

One of the requirements for an unfair dismissal claim under pt 3-2 of the FW Act is that the dismissal was not a case of genuine redundancy.

Genuine redundancy occurs where:

• the employee’s job is no longer required to be performed by anyone, because of changes in the operational requirements of the employer’s enterprise; and

• the employer has complied with any obligation in an applicable modern award or enterprise agreement to consult about the redundancy.

Further, a person's dismissal will not be a case of genuine redundancy if it would have been reasonable in all the circumstances for the person to be redeployed within the employer's enterprise; or the enterprise of an associated entity of the employer.

See Unfair dismissal — Genuine redundancy.