Redundancy/TUPE/New Role help?! Posting for traffic....

[lovemenomore]

Hi All

I am after some advice as I am getting confused by what I am being told by my employer/union.

I have worked for my employer for 4.5yrs and we were informed late last year that we are being taken over by a similar organisation. In December we were all notified of which category we are in for either keeping our role (A) in a pool for selection (B) or our role is already carried out by new business so there wont be a role for us and therefore redundant (c ) - I was in C as my role is done from their central offices some miles away from where I am now & there wouldn't be a similar role on site where I am.

The plan is to TUPE all employees over to the new company on a set date (in 4 wks time) and then you'll be made redundant that day if you are a C or not selected for the role in B. Whilst I was very upset at losing my job I came to terms with it and have started job hunting.

We had our consultation meetings in December and mine and a few others were really unhappy about how our meetings went - for example they had my job title incorrect and name spelt incorrectly and the person doing mine basically said I won't have a job and to start packing up. I sent feedback along the lines of job title wrong, name incorrect etc and how unprofessional I felt this person was. None of which has been acknowledged.

Fast forward to last week when they publish the results of the consultation and I have been moved to a B and will need to interview for a role which is nothing like my current one. The role is not similar in that I wont be doing anything like I do now, there is no job description or location advised and it has supervisory responsibilities as well as accounting which I do not currently do not ever have done.

I have asked our HR why I was moved to a different category and she said that the new organisation said I asked to be moved to this category by stating my job title was incorrect (??) they have never once spoke to me about this or advised this was happening I found out in an email sent to the whole company.
So I want to know if I have any options here as -

• I do not want to do the job they have mapped me too, it is not related at all, I have reasonable adjustments as I have a disability which means the new role may prove difficult (although I haven't seen a proper job description).
• I am told if I refuse to go to the interview I wont get redundancy.
• If I get the job and don't want it I have to then give 4 weeks notice and wont get redundancy.
• I am being told to 'flunk' the interview so they dont select me and make me redundant anyway?

I am just so upset over all this as its an emotional rollercoaster…any advice tips would be really appreciated!

Do you have representatives within your employee body that are liaising with the new employer? When I went through a redundancy process a couple of years ago, I was one of the representatives and we handled queries and issues like this on behalf of those employees who were impacted by the change. I've forgotten a lot of the detail (we were pretty much all in Group C by your description) but we had to explore all the Group B options in case anyone wanted to go head to head with the new employer's counterpart to see which one would get to keep their job. As I recall, there were quite clear terms on which two jobs would be considered comparable and these were applied to all jobs when determining the correct group. Anyway, you may get further if you can deal via these representatives as they should be working with the new employer to ensure the process works as agreed.

It's a horrid process to go through, I know it was stressful at the time and I hope everything works out for you.

Hi - thanks for the reply.

Yes there are employee reps however they were told of the outcomes if the consultation Monday and were also told not to tell us and we had to wait to all find out together.

I feel it isn't fair as not once has anybody from the new organisation has spoke to me let alone said hello in passing! Their style is appalling. My employee rep is accompanying me tomorrow to a meeting with them where I am going to ask why they feel my role is comparable, what the role actually involves and my options.