On 15Oct2020 1210, xxxxxx@quibell.org.uk wrote:
>
> Yup being “made redundant” is real in the UK.
>
> Downsizing is likely the best analogy from your point of view,
> although it goes a little further than that.
>
> If you are made redundant your job no longer exists. The job might get
> replaced by a robot, or the job may be automated, or the company may
> be cutting cost. Either way you are employed in a job that no longer
> exists, therefore the job is redundant, therefore the employee is
> “made redundant”.
>
> Think about taxi drivers or lorry drivers in the transition to
> automated vehicles in a taxi or logistics firm. There is a whole class
> of employee where the job no longer exists. It’s not that the firm is
> downsizing, it’s just that that there are no longer any need for
> drivers. They have been “made redundant”.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Ewan
>
Same terminology in New Zealand. Of course, companies like to make
people 'redundant' when downsizing, and then when they find that the job
being done was actually vital they recreate the role a few months later
- assuming they can't find someone who still works for them that they
can screw another job's worth of work out of (and then they wonder why
none of the work is being done well, or in a timely fashion...).

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>