Is my H.R acting properly ?

chiefgoobster

I will try and keep this as simple as possible and thanks in advance to anyone who can offer any advice !

I work in the public sector. My current job has been subject to outsourcing (therefore making us redundant ) for the last 9 months and will reach it's last days in the next fortnight.
We were given a choice to be TUPE'd to the outsourcing company.....which we all declined (by way of email) in favour of being transferred to a dept which is similar in job description to out present one.
We are now being informed that the new dept can only accomodate us for 1/3 or maybe 1/2 as less hours and possibly not the same hours as we are currently doing.

Question .....
As we declined to join the outsourcing company does our employer have to keep us on a 36hr week in the new dept ?...is it within it's legal employment rights to try and "re-employ" us at less hours ?

.....we had an option of joining the re-deployement pool until something similar/suitable arises.....redundancy payments are not being talked of because - and it's my thoughts - that they don't want to cough up the little money it would be and/or attract media attention for making people redundant.

An emploment lawyer briefly told us , until we are right in the kak they aren't interested.

I am not in the unions as they are as much use as chocolate teapots.

Thanks again to anyone who can offer any advice. I may not be logged on here for much longer and will thank people later/tomorrow.
Cheers all.

Jarndyce

chiefgoobster wrote: »

I will try and keep this as simple as possible and thanks in advance to anyone who can offer any advice !

I work in the public sector. My current job has been subject to outsourcing (therefore making us redundant ) for the last 9 months and will reach it's last days in the next fortnight.
We were given a choice to be TUPE'd to the outsourcing company.....which we all declined (by way of email) in favour of being transferred to a dept which is similar in job description to out present one.
We are now being informed that the new dept can only accomodate us for 1/3 or maybe 1/2 as less hours and possibly not the same hours as we are currently doing.

Question .....
As we declined to join the outsourcing company does our employer have to keep us on a 36hr week in the new dept ?...is it within it's legal employment rights to try and "re-employ" us at less hours ?

.....we had an option of joining the re-deployement pool until something similar/suitable arises.....redundancy payments are not being talked of because - and it's my thoughts - that they don't want to cough up the little money it would be and/or attract media attention for making people redundant.

An emploment lawyer briefly told us , until we are right in the kak they aren't interested.

I am not in the unions as they are as much use as chocolate teapots.

Thanks again to anyone who can offer any advice. I may not be logged on here for much longer and will thank people later/tomorrow.
Cheers all.

You must have chosen a top notch employment lawyer if that was the advice you got. Not. Join the union. They will tell you the answer.

SarEl

You had the choice of a suitable alternative role via TUPE to the company, and you all declined the positions. That means that you have actually declined your right to redundancy payments! I assume you didn't think to check on that before you declined? At the point that you declined TUPE-ing with your position you effectively, in law, indicated that you would not accept the suitable alternative offered, which means that redundancy payments are not due because you in effect resigned that position. And having refused to TUPE to the suitable alternative role, the employer is not obliged to find you work of the same pay and conditions - effectively you refused that post when offered so it is down to what they have to offer. In law you haven't a leg to stand on, so your only hope now is in the terms agreed with the employer / contractual or policy terms, with regard to redeployment or what happens to staff who refuse to TUPE. Otherwise, unless you want to leave with nothing ( a distinct possibility) then you have no choice but to take whatever work is on offer until something better becomes available.

SarEl

Jarndyce wrote: »

You must have chosen a top notch employment lawyer if that was the advice you got. Not. Join the union. They will tell you the answer.

It's too late to join a union now. And I suspect that the employment lawyers advice was (a) not phrased like that and (b) also taken too late. You see, my advice would have been to TUPE or loose the right to redeploy to an equivalent position or to get redundancy - but you would have had to ask me before you turned down the offer of suitable alternative employment.

ILW

Why did you turn down the TUPE?

Russe11

ILW wrote: »

Why did you turn down the TUPE?

because they might actually have to do some work in the private sector?

KiKi

ILW wrote: »

Why did you turn down the TUPE?

He said quite clearly that they turned down the TUPE in favour of being transferred to another similar internal department. If I liked the company I worked in, then I'd prefer to stay rather than move to a different organisation.

It seems (from my reading of it) that they were given a choice of TUPE or moving to a different internal role. They chose the latter. Only *after* declining TUPE did the organisation tell them that they can't ALL take the internal roles, so now it leaves 2/3 or 1/2 of them with no job, and no right to redundancy because they declined the TUPE offer.

To assume that they don't want to actually do work in the private sector (as Russe11 did) is rather harsh and not at all what is indicated in the first post.

IF what the OP said (and my reading of it) is correct, then I think it's unfair - although perhaps perfectly legal - of the company to position them with a 'TUPE or another internal role?', then only tell them that there are not enough internal roles after the TUPE has been declined.

Obviously the legal points still stand, but if that's the case then the team may well have accepted the TUPE, knowing that the internal roles were not guaranteed, and that the hours etc are different. Perhaps the OP could tell us what the actual wording of the internal offer was (at the point of choice). It might not make a difference legally, but if the company led them to believe there were internal roles on the same T&Cs, that might have some bearing on the decision they made, I'm sure.

Just a different perspective.
KiKi

Jarndyce

SarEl wrote: »

It's too late to join a union now. And I suspect that the employment lawyers advice was (a) not phrased like that and (b) also taken too late. You see, my advice would have been to TUPE or loose the right to redeploy to an equivalent position or to get redundancy - but you would have had to ask me before you turned down the offer of suitable alternative employment.

Never too late to join a union.

But I agree re legal advice - like many posts on here, it can be paraphrased as 'Help - I have done something because I thought I would be better off and I am suddenly going to be worse off - I didn't think through the consequences of my decision and now I want someone else to provide me with the solution so that I don't have to take responsibility for my actions'.

Or is that a bit harsh!

Gleeful

Jarndyce wrote: »

Never too late to join a union.

But I agree re legal advice - like many posts on here, it can be paraphrased as 'Help - I have done something because I thought I would be better off and I am suddenly going to be worse off - I didn't think through the consequences of my decision and now I want someone else to provide me with the solution so that I don't have to take responsibility for my actions'.

Or is that a bit harsh!

A union will not help you for issues that occur before you join. I found this out when my union didn't set up my Direct Debit up properly and my membership lapsed-I ended up without union help as I technically wasn't a member when the problem occurred.

SarEl

Jarndyce wrote: »

Never too late to join a union.

But I agree re legal advice - like many posts on here, it can be paraphrased as 'Help - I have done something because I thought I would be better off and I am suddenly going to be worse off - I didn't think through the consequences of my decision and now I want someone else to provide me with the solution so that I don't have to take responsibility for my actions'.

Or is that a bit harsh!

Oh I agree entirely, on both counts. Unfortunately I know that people who didn't join a union and discover the fact that it wasn't so useless after all, still don't join unions until too late again!

But KiKi is correct - as I said previously, the only hope here is in what policy / terms were offered by the employer at the time, and what was actually promised - which I would lay bets isn't what the employees believed it was - because legally there is nothing really to go on. The problem I often see is that employees do things thinking they know what is what, but have seldom read the paperwork or the details thoroughly. They assume promises and protections they don't have, and unfortunately the law takes no account of the fact that you didn't know it.

p00hsticks

KiKi wrote: »

It seems (from my reading of it) that they were given a choice of TUPE or moving to a different internal role. They chose the latter. Only *after* declining TUPE did the organisation tell them that they can't ALL take the internal roles, so now it leaves 2/3 or 1/2 of them with no job, and no right to redundancy because they declined the TUPE offer.

FWIW, my reading of it is slightly different - there *are* internal jobs for them all, but not for as many hours as the original position (1/2 to 2/3 of the original hours), and possibly in a different shift pattern.