Bonus

Owlmeister

I work in the call centre for a large retail company. This area of the business was TUPE'd over to another company 17 months ago with the understanding that the benefits would be retained. Long story short, the benefits have slowly been removed leaving us with next to nothing apart from a monthly salary.
The issue here is part of the business was retained by the retail company who have now paid the employees a substantial bonus plus a pay rise. The rest of us that were TUPE'd were informed by the new management that no bonus or pay rise would be considered this year. I personally along with almost all of my colleagues find this to be completely unfair as the success of the call centre over the last financial year has very much been a consolidated effort made by all the colleagues irrespective of which umbrella they fall under.
I was hoping someone may have any advice or experience of this kind of matter or know of any precedents that have been set? 

yksi

Your contract is with your employer. It makes no difference what company the work is done for and you aren't entitled to bonuses that company pays to its own employees - because you aren't one of them.

Having said that your own employer can't just strip benefits if they are part of your contract. Look at your contract to check what was actually agreed. If they change the benefits which are in your contract they can only do this by you and them signing another contract. What you will probably find is that some of these things are just perks provided by your company but which do not form part of the contract, meaning they can be withdrawn without compensation. As an example, things like half-price movie tickets, free lunch while on site, discounted holiday schemes etc, if they aren't in the contract you don't have a legal hold on them.

Marcon

Owlmeister said:

I work in the call centre for a large retail company. This area of the business was TUPE'd over to another company 17 months ago with the understanding that the benefits would be retained. Long story short, the benefits have slowly been removed leaving us with next to nothing apart from a monthly salary.
The issue here is part of the business was retained by the retail company who have now paid the employees a substantial bonus plus a pay rise. The rest of us that were TUPE'd were informed by the new management that no bonus or pay rise would be considered this year. I personally along with almost all of my colleagues find this to be completely unfair as the success of the call centre over the last financial year has very much been a consolidated effort made by all the colleagues irrespective of which umbrella they fall under.
I was hoping someone may have any advice or experience of this kind of matter or know of any precedents that have been set? 

I can understand that must be galling for you, but what your former employer does for its current staff is neither here nor there. 

Something may feel (and indeed be) 'unfair' but unless it is unlawful, I'm afraid there is nothing you can do. Bonuses are very rarely contractual, any more than pay increases are.