My sister was just laid off her job...prayers please!!!!

Sorry to hear that, Diana.  I'll be praying that she finds something suitable. 

Stephanie and Paul, how on earth did they ever come up with the term "redundancy?" 

Hi Ruth----Redundancy is a legal term in UK Employment Law and a form of loosing your job because your services are no longer required,or your job no longer exists, but there's no other reason to dismiss you. Often comes about due to firms re-structuiring or ceasing to trade and you've lost your job through no fault of your own. Thus, an employer has to pay you compensation for this.

But, an empoyee must meet certain requirments first; age during the term of employment, and lenght of service for example. Statutory Redundancy is the legal minimum an employer would be required to pay; but some might have a contract of employment that exceeds the legal minimum. The first £30,000 is tax free and not counted as taxable income.

You can read about it here which gives the basic laws about redundancy; the word itself from Redundant of course.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/index.htm

Tell her to go work for Honda or Toyota, they are still in business, I doubt that they have CEO's with an lear jet that yhey got from thinking so hard on how to get themselves in debt, rather then out of it. Same for Saturn car dealers..and an few others. you know when cars were first made, they were inexpensive enough an person three years down the line could pay for an new car, and if they wanted to trade ti in every other year for an new one,..that kept cars rolling off the production line constantly, but then they got greedy and started raising prices, and higher, and fancier cars they made for an higher cost, and SUV's costing as much as many people had been paying for their houses in cash. People could no longer afford an new car, let alone and used car most the time. The gas price hikes just added to it. The insurance rates, just added to it.  It's now come to the problem of not being able to afford one for the most part. Sad thing is, in many areas this kind of transportation is greatly needed to get one place to another. People now are traveling as much as 2 hours one way in some cases from the country to the city where they work. She could take an chance in the electric car field, I think once it gets started and the wrinkles smooth out that it's going for most people to "pay" to have at least one in their driveway...IF they keep the cost low enough people can afford them. Smart cars are now $13,000...but they aren't big enough to be family cars so much as comuter cars. If they had lowered the price on them $5,000  you can well bet everyone and their uncle sam would have one by now. Diana, everyone in my business class at the college stated that they got their "job" (most of them middle managment" from someone they knew or through someone they knew. There were no strangers handing in resumes  in thier employment. That came "afterward"...but they knew them prior in some way. Good luck.