Reply to post:

"Redundancy by email is undoubtedly the classy way to do it rather than an old-fashioned face-to-face meeting"

Having experienced redundancy (though not always as a participant) in both the US/California and the UK then both versions have their problems. Maybe "redundancy by email" may seem a little brutal but I was in a Caliofornia company where on a friday morning they announced a 10% reduction at 9am and over the next 3 hours everyone sat at their desks waiting to hear if they were being called to a meeting room for their "face-to-face meeting" and by noon 10% of the company were no longer in the building. On the UK side its different - you get a letter informing you that you (or technically your job) is "at risk of redundancy" and then you enter a "consultation period" where you have a series of face-to-face meetings where (if its not a total site closure) you are effectively given a chance to argue why they should keep you and then only at the end of the consultation period (possibly legally required to be as long as 45 days) do you get notified if you are actually being made redundant. So, "face-to-face" meetings can also be pretty brutal and in many ways the Californian system of announcing that there will be redundancies followed swiftly by notification of who is being made redundant may be better than the UK method of either keeping everyone in suspense not knowing if they are going for a 30-45 days or, what can be worse, saying that there is a proposal for a site to close but for the next 30-45 days they have to consult to see if anyone has a "cunning plan" to prevent this ... when in reality everyone knows the decision has been made and it just delays the ability to move on for another month and a half.