Does anyone know about employement law...would this situation be 'protected' by TUPE or not?

[ThereIsNoEleventeen]

DH is office based. The company that he works for recently lost a large contract to a competitor. Not surprisingly this has put the company under financial strain, the contract was lost a few weeks ago and DH has been busy on other work.

HR have now informed DH that because he spent over a certain percentage of his working time (in the last year) on the lost contract he will be 'protected' by TUPE.

HR have also intimated that they cannot keep DH on because they need to cut costs...so should the company that won the new contact not wish to employ DH then he would...well they couldn't really give an answer to that because the company are 400 miles away and they didn't seem to know.

I can only find information that relates to things like catering contracts that actually come up for tender whereas this was not the situation here...so any more information would be helpful.

Afraid there isn't a simple answer to this. It's cropping up more and more often due to the increased use of tendering by govt agencies, local authorities etc.

Is he able to get his hands on the contract terms because there is usually a requirement for a TUPE statement before these are awarded. It may be that the company who now has the contract is obligated to take him on but it's a very complex area of employment law.

Thanks Bilstory, he may be able to get a look at the contract, it would seem like they are going to have quite a few meetings about it all. I wondered if it was all quite complex as I couldn't find a straight answer on any of the websites that I looked on.

TUPE applies in buy-outs/takeovers and also where a particular service or function transfers to another supplier. In those situations the new employer doesn't get to decide whether or not they "wish to employ" TUPE'd staff, their employment transfers over like it or not.

TUPE is quite a regulated process and involves consultation.

If it is a TUPE situation his continuous employment and terms and conditions are preserved and his employment literally just transfers over to the new employer.

If the new employer are 400 miles away and would require him to work there, they should probably give him the option of relocation or redundancy, just as if his current employer relocated, unless he has something in his own contract which allows for forced relocation of that nature.

If the new employer have too many staff once transferred employees are under their employment, they can make redundancies, but they can't automatically make transferred staff redundant, they'd have to conduct a fair selection process.