Pay freezes ‘staving off redundancies’

Many employees have been doing everything within their power in order to prevent redundancies in the workplace, it has been claimed.

Following this week’s Annual Barometer Forecast from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which predicted unemployment levels will reach a peak of 2.8 million next year, Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser to the CIPD, has claimed workers are still keen to avoid redundancies.

He added: “We’ve seen employees take wage freezes or pay cuts or shorter hours in order to stave off redundancies.”

The one remaining question, Mr Philpott asserted, was how long avoiding redundancies could be sustained in the new year.

He went on to note that the labour market was now more sustainable than it had been in the past but that future cuts in public spending could cause unemployment levels to increase further still.

The CIPD this week predicted that people who stay in work in 2010 are likely to receive salary increases of below the rate of inflation.