Insolvency but still trading - employee rights

[spinn]

Partner is an employee (full time permanent, 5yrs service) of Car1111on. (Don't need media for this). We are trying to work out what the employee rights are because this whole saga appears to be not following normal procedures.

Monday - they file for liquidation. Employees are told to carry on working and will be paid until the end of the month. This will be 16 days.

Everything online says that if liquidation, employees are dismissed at that point. However this hasn't happened. It seems they are being expected to carry on working indefinitely (planning for work in spring etc, the projects in process currently are carrying on and could do for months) and under uncertainty - it feels like it's week by week at the moment.

If it was administration, after 14 days, the administrators would take on the employees old terms and conditions but there is no guidance for this happening in insolvency.

Does anyone have any experience or legal knowledge of whether my partner is under contract still? Will that be if they go over the 14 days? Contract has a 3 month notice period for resigning whereas redundancy is likely to immediate. Job applications are going in elsewhere but neither of us have any clue as to whether they are able to walk away at the end of the month or if a 3month notice period still applies and this impacts on applications.

There has been no communication at all from pwc about the terms and conditions, benefits which still apply etc.

Some help here and citizens advice will also be helpful

www.gov.uk/your-rights-if-your-employer-is-insolvent

Thanks, I've seen that but it doesn't look at what happens if they don't dismiss you. It seems this part is the anomaly and it could keep people hanging for months on end.

I suspect we will need to see an employment lawyer as CAB may not be specialised for this.

You could try calling the insolvency line at the end of the gov guidance. ACAS are pretty good too.

Is he in a union?

The government has said it will continue to pay those Carillion employees who work in public sector jobs. Carillion employees who provide services to private sector firms had their wages stopped yesterday.

Given that your partner has been told they will be paid until the end of the month I presume they are providing services to the public sector. The government will need someone to do these jobs. If your partner sits tight they may find that they get TUPEd to either work for the government direct or for whoever takes over the contract.

Does he work in the public or private sector?

No union.

sector is neither private or public (kind of mixture of the two).
There were no other bidders for the work they does so there is no one to tupe too unless the quango take it in-house but I also know don't want to go there currently (we are anticipating being in a position of having some offers within the next week).

Liquidators told everyone on Monday they'd cover wages to end of the month, government has told everyone only public and tbh most of that refers to service workers (like cleaners/caterers in hospitals etc) rather than the project managers at hq so government bit doesn't really apply for this team.