TUPE help needed urgently

[zubin]

Hi

I work for a small vol sector organisation who delivers a service to a particular client group. We are funded by the local authority to deliver this service. There are about 6 other orgs who deliver similar services but not in the same way we do or to the same client group. Late last year the LA decided that they weren't going to continue funding small contracts but instead create one big contract delivered by one organisation. As we are very specialist we didn't put in for the contract and it has since been awarded to another org. I thought staff would be TUPE'd over to the new org, have had a phone call today from the new org introducing themselves etc etc the guy then said that there are more staff on the tupe list than they have jobs on offer so whilst they will tupe staff over all the staff will then be at risk of redundancy and some will go. I really need some advice on where I stand with this, I understood tupe protected individuals but apparently not - is this fair and if it is and I was made redundant what would make the redundancy unfair. I am in a total panic so any advice on anything to do with this would be fantastic

Sorry, but this is fine and lawful (provided the proper redunancy consultation is followed).

What TUPE protects is you not being transferred to the new organisation or your terms and conditions being changed. If they have a genuine redundancy situation when you get there because they can do the contract with fewer people then they can make redundancies.

Sorry!

Ok, so when we tupe over there will be several elements to the new contract the client group I work with in the way i work being one of them. If they offered my client group work to somebody else who is currently working with a different group and made me redundant would that be unfair? And can they externally advertise jobs whilst making existing staff redundant

Thanks

Well, when they make redundancies they will 'pool' similar jobs together and score people in the pool to decide who to make redundant. This means that a role could go which is one from the pool, but the person in that role might not necessarily be the one to go. It's hard to say what might be appropriate in your situation, because obviously you can argue that jobs are too disimilar to be pooled together.

What do you mean advertise externally? They have to offer existing staff affected by the redundancy priority for suitable internal vacancies, so it wouldn't look good if they were advertising. However, there's nothing to stop a company making redundancies in accounts whilst recruiting in sales, or whatever.

Thank you so much for the advice - I am just panicking at the moment and it is all so complicated when you don't know anything about this sort of thing, I was thinking of joining a union just in case but apparently you need to be a member for a certain time frame before you need support before they will support you! I will just sit tight and wait - thanks again

Hi zubin,

I hope all goes well for you in this matter.

Quick ?n regarding the trade union time frame - how long should you have been a member beforehand? Thanks.

Usually you need to have been a member of a union for 12 weeks before being able to take up their support- they usually advise you in the meantime though.

ACAS may well be of help- this is a free and confidential service.

I work for a local authority and policy states that they MUST work with Unison in these kinds of situations.

I am involved in a similar issue involving our tendering a contract out to a vol org hence being reasonably well informed on the process.

Have you been offered any other jobs, or is anything internally likely to be made available to you?

Purplehat, thank you very much.