A friend works for a company that has 2 teams of customer service staff both headed up by single managers, she is one of them. The manager she reports into has been telling her for about a year that the other manager, whose performance is unacceptable, would be made redundant and she would take over both teams as manager.

She is now pregnant and the company have sat both herself and the other manager down and told them that both their roles are going to be made redundant and the new position will be filled by interviewing both herself and the other manager, along with any external or internal candidates that may apply for the new role. They have told her that there is a chance that they could recruit someone externally and both her and the other manager would be redundant.

Can they make 2 people redundant and then recruit externally for the role that is very similar ?