Question on voluntary redundancy for civil servant?

Chef1980uk

I have been a Civil Servant for 9y6m and as of 1st April 2011, I will be transferred to a contractor. All T&C's are to be transferred under TUPE and I am wondering if this covers the payout for VR?
The contractors have stated they won't be making any compulsory redundancies but haven't mentioned voluntary. Any ideas?

dampsquib

If you have any "Voluntary" terms left after the attacks on your terms & conditions by the current and last governments, the good news is that TUPE does indeed protect all your "severance" conditions: voluntary & compulsory. This protection has been confirmed by the European Court of Justice in cases such as Beckmann v Dynamaco Whicheloe Macfarlane and Martin & Others v South Bank University.
In practice however, in may be difficult to get your new employer to accept that your terms already cover voluntary situations, so they may make their own "voluntary offers" and staff and your union may fall for this on the basis of "it's only voluntary, so staff don't need to accept what's on offer". If you do fall for this, you might never see the correct voluntary terms applied. Also, if you sign accepting the terms on offer, this will be used against you should you challenge the compensation afterwards at an Enployment Tribunal.
If Voluntary redundancies do arise, make sure that all service is taken into account - decisions made about pensions (which aren't protected by TUPE), do not affect the amount of service to be taken into account when determining severance compensation.
To end on some good news, as a Civil Servant, you did not qualify for statutory notice if you were made redundant, as a private sector employee, you will - useful, if no contractual notice is due!
Good Luck!