TUPE Time limit?

ZootHornRollo

Hi,

My partner works for Haldanes - who recently bought over several Somerfield Stores.

They had their union rep in today spouting off about TUPE and how the employee's term and conditions transferred over to Haldanes from Somerfield only stand for 12 months - after that it is a free for all as far as the new owners are concerned and they can then change wages/t's & c's etc and even lay people off without the previous length of continuous employment being taken into consideration.

I believe this to be a whole lot of bulls**t scare mongering by the union and only serves to increase my loathing for USDAW. what would be the point in TUPE if one year down the line you are back to square one. I have transferred via TUPE with a previous employer and at no point did anyone mention a time period.

anybody know how this really works?

DVardysShadow

As I understand it, TUPE just carries over your terms, conditions and length of service and the new employer can only alter them in the same way that the old employer could. There may be a grain of truth in what the Union rep says, in that there may be some special protection for 12 months, which is over and above what the old employer could have done. Or there may not.

But it is disappointing that a Union rep should mislead people either through intent or ignorance.

rupee99

Some things can be altered "by negotiation" under TUPE, other items such as length of service cannot.

Andy_L

As Dvardy & yourself say your T&Cs transfer over "as is" and then the new employer can change them in exactly the same way as the previous employer could. ie negotiation/consultation is required and any forced change could lead to a constructive dismissial case.
However, IMO,realistically the only advantages of TUPE is keeping redundancy and, to a limited extent, pension rights. If they aren't better than statuatory minimum then it's not that much use as Haldanes could have made him redundant anyway

Mudd14

As others have said above, tUPE just protects your rights in your contract, the only way they can chnage these is through negiotiation and your agreement. There is no set period from when TUPE no longer applies but as with all business things develop and naturally chage over time.

The fundemental parts of your contract however cannot be changed without your agreement.

I have had dealings with USDAW and in my opinion they are threatening and try to intimadate the employer into backing down. One of their reps tried teling me that if we propsed a reduced hours from 39 to 30 I had to pay the person redundancy on those 9 hours. When I started quoting the ERA at her as redundancy is termination of employment she soon backed down.

ZootHornRollo

Thanks for the info folks. As suspected the rep is full of it - trying to increase membership! I fully understand that t's & c's can chage over time.

As a former USDAW member they never served any of my needs and really let me down on the one occasion i needed them in six years of membership. I had to throw their rep out of a disciplinary hearing in order to get a word in.

patman99

Haldanes will have to maintain the same pay that the employees were on as Somerfields employees.
Essec County council got into trouble over that one. They out-sourced their cleaning to a sub-contractor who had to run the cleaning dept. currently in place, the subbie cut the workers wages by £2 per hour, the workers sought legal advice and the subbie then had to pay them the same as they were on at the time of transfer PLUS back-dated to the time of the paycut.