Different terms and conditions for the same job

a_non_y_mouse

Hello All,

Wasn't sure if this was the right board to post this on but it's about as close as I could get.

I'll start out by saying that it doesn't affect me too much, but I know some colleagues are beginning to feel demotivated by it so I just wondered if anyone had an expertise on the subject.

Basically, two departments (one from the Council, one from the PCT in the same area, a lot of other departments have also been merged in the same way) doing the same thing have been brought into the same building and the teams have been joined together to do the same work, though contacts have remained with their original employer, so no changes in terms and conditions etc. have occured.

A new company has been formed recently, and both Council and PCT staff have been TUPE'd into the new company with existing terms and conditions still in place.

My question is, is the company allowed to run in it's current state where people doing the same job for the same organisation are on a different set of terms and conditions (eg. pay, hours)

The issue has been raised, and the response was that the issue was a low priority (and from a newly formed companies perspective it probably is) but I know that it will not be addressed for another year or so.

As I say, it doesn't really affect me but I would be interested to know, I tried to do a little of my own research but couldn't find any that seemed to apply.

Apologies if something similar has been asked before, I did a quick search but was not able to locate anything.

Thanks for Reading!

The_Pedant

On the whole, an individual is taken on for the role described to them, in exchange for a salary agreed between them.
There is therefore no reason why two people in the same role could not have totally different terms & salary.

In the public sector it does tend to be a little more structured but there is still little (as far as I'm aware) to stop people having different terms & pay scales.

Due to the TUPE process the company would be obligated to keep terms unchanged & probably is more concerned about a smooth transition than possibly causing a storm trying to get everyone to agree new contracts ... hence why it's a low priority.

Andy_L

a_non_y_mouse wrote: »

My question is, is the company allowed to run in it's current state where people doing the same job for the same organisation are on a different set of terms and conditions (eg. pay, hours)

Yes, providing there isn't some sort of indirect discrimination going on, eg its mostly women who are on the worse T&Cs as a result of the demographics of the differing companies workforces

Notmyrealname

a_non_y_mouse wrote: »

My question is, is the company allowed to run in it's current state where people doing the same job for the same organisation are on a different set of terms and conditions (eg. pay, hours)

Yes. As long as the differences are not based on discriminatory grounds (race, age, sex etc) then there is no right for two employees doing the same job to be paid the same.

jm2926

I used to work for a large company who supplied services on 3-5 year contracts, so they were forever TUPE'ing people in and out either between them and customers or rivals. The end result was a large number of the 10,000 employees were on different T&C's. For example, on one contract some people were paid 1.5 hourly rate for working before 9am, while the people sitting next to them were not.

They did eventually have a "consolidation" project to move everyone onto the same T&C's. Not all aspects were considered to be "in-scope" for this consultation, e.g. core hours were in-scope and changed accordingly, but salaries remained unchanged. They didn't have to do this, it was to save their admin overhead of maintaining all the different T&C's.

a_non_y_mouse

Thanks for the replies everyone, this does help to clear everything up in my mind and makes sense.

Thanks again!