The role of employee representitives in TUPE process

Each employer probably approaches the consultation and employee representative role slightly differently according to what is being proposed, scale of change proposed, locations involved, etc, but I found this definition with a bit of googling that seems to sum it up fairly well:

The role of employee representatives in the context of a redundancy exercise is to represent the views and opinions of their constituent employees in the information and consultation process. They are required to represent the interests of all the affected employees, not just their own interests, and should take reasonable steps to ensure that the views of the affected employees are taken into account by the employer as part of the consultation process.

The employer must disclose certain information to the representatives, and consultation must include consideration of ways of avoiding the dismissals, reducing the number of employees to be dismissed and mitigating the effects of the dismissals. Consultation must be undertaken "with a view to reaching agreement" with the employee representatives.

The employees must be given access to the affected employees and afforded such accommodation and other facilities as may be appropriate for that purpose. They have a statutory right to reasonable paid time off to perform their functions.

I've been an employee rep for a redundancy exercise (not TUPE) albeit nearly 15 years ago, so memory about some of the fine details may have slipped memory. But basically we were there as a conduit to collect questions and views from the affected employees, and (theoretically) also present any potential alternatives to the employer to minimise or mitigate the impact of the change. We also communicated the outcomes of meetings with the employer, back to affected colleagues. I didn't put myself forward to be a rep again, although we had a number of redundancy rounds, and the reps in the last round were excellent - they invited comments, questions, proposals, went to meetings with the employer, held teleconferences afterwards to brief us all, sent out emails summarising the recent discussions, etc.

All that sounds a bit dry, but what does it mean really? In practice what it involved (when I did it) was listening to colleagues who were worried and/or angry they might lose their jobs. Tears were not uncommon. (We were on a 90 day consultation process because of the scale, and it was frustrating because the uncertainty was spread out over a long period, and wore people down over time. Organisation charts, so we could see what roles were retained in the business, were promised, then delayed. People had their minds fixed on certain dates when they might get a bit more certainty and then there was anger when it was realised the uncertainty would continue for another week or two). It was effectively a full time job. You could get interrupted at any time to listen to someone's fears, concerns or questions.

In my experience, and this might just be my employer (although somehow I doubt it...) the consultation never changed the outcome that the employer proposed. E.g. if it was an office closure, or a large number of roles to be made redundant - that never changed.

What the consultation did sometimes achieve was a slight improvement to the package. E.g. during one redundancy round just before Christmas involving fairly senior managers, the proposal was to ask them to leave quite quickly and pay them in lieu of notice on top of their redundancy. Several of the managers had company cars and pointed out that replacing a car at very short notice right ahead of Christmas wasn't great, so the company allowed them to keep their cars for a few weeks after their redundancy date.

In other cases, if an office was closing and work was being transitioned to other sites, retention bonuses were paid - some people preferred to leave immediately in the hope of getting another job quickly before the job market became 'flooded' with a lot of people from the same office. Recognising this, the company offered a few hundred pounds to people who stayed till the 'end' as there would need to be a transfer of work over time. (It doesn't sound much but at the time it was a reasonable percentage of the salary of impacted staff, it was a call centre so not particularly highly paid).

There may be a degree of 'negotiation' - when I did it, there was a union rep also in the meetings, as some but by no means all of the staff impacted were in a union. They tended to be the ones pushing for better terms (and to be honest because they were doing it, the rest of us tended to let them take the lead on this). But like I said, there probably isn't going to be much the employer is going to concede, but they might have a couple of things to throw into the mix to make it look like they're listening and wanting to be fair. At the end of the day I presume the business is still running and it's not in their interests if they upset everyone so much no work gets done. Then again some employers probably aren't as reasonable as mine were!

But definitely, if the collective view of your colleagues is for time off for interviews or bonuses for staying to the end, both of which seem eminently reasonable, you should use the consultation process to put those forward.

Good luck.