Employment Law - confidentially - stopping you from applying for other jobs??

[soontobeslendergirl]

Looking for a bit of info if anyone knows about employment law or confidentially/Data Protection.

Bit of background info. Large company outsourced a lot of functions to a 3rd party outsource company and tupe-d over a lot of staff. The Client company and outsourcer still operate from the same location. Over the last few years, outsourcer salaries and T&Cs have deteriorated whilst those for the client company have improved. There are a lot of similar types of roles performed in both companies especially the more technical/specialist roles.

Recently there have been vacancies in the Client company and understandably staff in the outsource company have applied (about a £5k increase on a £25-£30k salary) and been succesful as they are highly experienced and knowledable about the clients work. The office site is also fairly rural so it can be difficult to get satff willing to travel away from the bigger city locations.

As a result of these staff movements, Outsource company has then struggled to supply the service to the correct Service level to the Client and the Client has pulled them up on this to which the answer has been "well stop poaching our staff"

Staff in Outsource company got a verbal cascade yesterday basically saying that if they apply for a job with client and their current role is seen as critical then agreement has been made that Client will send back a letter saying this and that their application will not be proceded with.

Can they do that? Aside from anything else, surely as staff have no obligation to tell their manager if they are applying elsewhere for a job, someone must be going behind their back and informing the Outscource company management in order to decide on whether the role the person is in would be seen as critical?

Whilst I do understand that the two companies are attempting to agree a solution that means that their respective businesses can function, it really smacks of treating people as a commodity to be bought and sold without free will.

Most of me thinks that it is down to the Outsource company to do something about Terms and Conditions and moral in general to stop staff being tempted to move if they are then finding it difficult to recruit new people.

Sorry for the essay, didn't want to drip feed.

And none of this is making Outsource consider why everyone is wanting to jump ship and wonder if they need to change things?

I don't know what the legal position is, but such a situation would probably have me looking for jobs elsewhere anyway.

EBear apparently not! Well, why should they bother when they can just ban everyone from applying for jobs with virtually the only other big employer in that industry within a reasonable travel distance?!?!

People are basically trapped unless they want the expense and hassle of travel. There is currently free travel supplied from the local area for staff to the office, so if they went elsewhere it would be a big cost and also time added to their working day so people have put up with it.

I imagine it would depend on the contract between Employer and Outsourcer. Some do have in their contracts that if a person goes to work for the company that the outsourcing company is paid a fee. Otherwise big companies would just hire directly those people they like from outsourcing companies which would cost them less and the outsourcer would be out of business. They can't necessarily stop people going to work for them, but they can charge the employer a pretty hefty fee for hiring one of their staff if that is in their contract.

Midnight, given that so many people have already done it, I presume that the contract doesn't have such a clause and that the client has told them to feck off if they asked to add one. I will ask the Union and see if they have been consulted and maybe use the UCAS helpline. Thanks for your help.