WHY does the big R for Redundancy strike so much fear into the hearts of employers and employees alike? Why is it the no-no word of a CV?

Company takeovers always leave the dilemma of having duplicated departments and it's economic madness to keep both going. Therefore takeovers bring some redundancies at best and major redundancies at worst.

If a company employee who has been faithful to an employer for 15 years, giving his best, suddenly finds himself in a redundant situation, why does he now feel the stigma of redundancy? He is still the same, solid, reliable worker that he was the day before his redundancy notice. His skills and expertise have not left in the same redundant manner.

You would think employers would be scouring the pages of the Takeover World that we now live in, to secure such talents for their companies. But the stigma must remain, for to put Redundant on your CV brings about the same fear that cancer did many years ago, being talked about in hushed whispers.

It's amazing that a word like Redundant can have two opposite meanings -- the first is 'Superfluous' the second 'surging, overflowing (poetic)'. It's also ironic that the computer age that we live in sees Redundancy in a totally different light. To them it means, "the presence of components which improve the reliability of a system."

Let's hope employers will see redundant people as an enhancement to their companies and allow CVs with redundancy on them the same courtesy that we give our inanimate objects.

George Cross,

Inver Road,

Bispham,

Blackpool.