Employment Quest
 

Just a quick quest.

If the company you are working for currently has been sold to another company along with all the employees, do they need to offer a Volentary Redundancy option.

There is someone that i work for that says that he started to work for the current company and does not want to work for the other but the partners have not given any redundancy option. If he wanted to work for the other company he would have got a job with them instead.

So any answers.

Thanks./

To my knowledge, they don't have to do anything. The only thing they can't do is sack the employee's just on the principal that they want to replace them.

I may be wrong, but sorry if that's not what your friend wanted to hear :)

Re: Employment Quest
 

No they don't need to offer redundancy unless they move location - my company has just chenged from Mowlem to Carillion but stayed at the same location (for now)

Unforunatly the partners have agreed with the new company to take on all the workers and they cant get rid of anyone or lower their pay for 2 years without giving redundancy pay.

A nasty situation is when one company buys a similarly sized, geographically close rival and then decides to "merge" the two. For certain jobs, they only need one person and you can guarantee that unless the person doing the same job in the company doing the buying is a complete numpty, the management of the new owner is unlikely to sack them in favour of an "unproven" new boy from the other company.

Of course, they get round this by making everyone reapply for their jobs and then "after careful consideration" deciding to keep who they had already... :?

Well im in that boat as my job will not be needed anymore at this branch as its centralised. But at least i know i have to be made redundant with pay due to contractual obligation they have.

There are rules (TUPE) that define what a undertaking and rights exist when ownership of a business transfers.

When my employers looked to sell off their IT business the prospective buyer had horrendous redundancy terms whereas our existing rights would have given me 32 weeks pay at full rate, the new company would have only paid me for 18 at statutory minimum. When we raised this with the prospective new employer they countered that they had never actually made anyone redundant.

Thankfully the prospective buyer realised that the value of the business was far less than what the company were asking and pulled out.

Hey - at least TUPE requires the settlement to be as good, if not better than teh deal that would have been offered by the former owner, and this applies to all transfered entitlements. They must also consider your employment as continuous.


Used to get this happening loads to us under Compulsory Competitive Tender before the law changed, when CCT contracts were limited to a maximum of 5 years.