Harmonisation of employee contracts - but not for all!

moveover0

hello
my employers have informed all staff that an additional clause is to be added to our contracts of employment to harmonise all staff (having bought 2 other companies over the last 2 years), so far so good.
But, we have just found out that employees at one of the companies purchased will not have the following clause: "the company reserves the right to lay off staff for an undetermined period of time without pay" until at such time their services will be required".
Naturally this caused an uproar but to add insult to injury was that it now transpires that this clause doesn't appear in one of the companies bought 2 years ago.
I find this strange and somewhat unethical seeing as the whole point of the revised contracts was to bring everyone together (one of the companies was tupe'd, this one does have the new clause).
Can they do this or does it conflict with any legal discriminatory Precedents? 

Undervalued

moveover0 said:

hello
my employers have informed all staff that an additional clause is to be added to our contracts of employment to harmonise all staff (having bought 2 other companies over the last 2 years), so far so good.
But, we have just found out that employees at one of the companies purchased will not have the following clause: "the company reserves the right to lay off staff for an undetermined period of time without pay" until at such time their services will be required".
Naturally this caused an uproar but to add insult to injury was that it now transpires that this clause doesn't appear in one of the companies bought 2 years ago.
I find this strange and somewhat unethical seeing as the whole point of the revised contracts was to bring everyone together (one of the companies was tupe'd, this one does have the new clause).
Can they do this or does it conflict with any legal discriminatory Precedents? 

Yes they can and no it doesn't unless the reason breaches one of the few legally protected grounds (e.g race, gender, sexual orientation etc). Apart from this there is no legal right for all employees to be treated the same.