My wife works for the council. She’s been offered a better job in the council but not received the formal offer. The council are saying that she needs to resign from her current role before they can give her the offer for the new role. To my mind this is back to front, I’ve never resigned from a job without a formal offer of a new job in hand first.

The only other complication is that her current job was with the district council that merged with the county council last year, so she was TUPE’d over.

What do you think? She’s getting the union involved.

I suspect they are trying to break continuity of service

tj +1 – seen it with teachers here.

Insist on job offer written down first. No way I would hand in notice without the offer in writing and accepted.

Does the council HR department not have standard protocols for job offers and job descriptions?

We had to ‘educate’ my wife’s employer about her terms and conditions. The ‘award winning’ HR department didn’t actually know that teachers in Scotland have standard terms and conditions, and basically point blank told her she was wrong to claim a few things (like the £10k pay increase she was entitled to…). Once the correct paperwork from https://www.snct.org.uk was forwarded they backed down. Since then mrs_oab has helped a few other colleagues to assert their rights.

I’d agreee with TJ, that sounds well dodgy

Thanks all, definitely has a whiff about it.

From gov.uk

The new employer can change an employee’s terms and conditions if the reason is an ‘economic, technical or organisational reason’ (ETO) involving changes in the workforce or workplace, such as a result of redundancies or a move from a managerial to a non-managerial position. The employee needs to agree to this change.

She’s moving from a clerical to a management position so if all they’re trying to do is change T&Cs that would cover it without breaking continuity of service.

My wife works for the council. She’s been offered a better job in the council but not received the formal offer. The council are saying that she needs to resign from her current role before they can give her the offer for the new role.

Worth requesting that in writing?

Some organisations have different entities for different groups of employees for payroll etc. So technically you may have to terminate employment with one to join another – but this should have no bearing on continuity of service, pensions etc. Ask for everything in writing to clarify. It happened to me a few times when moving jobs in a large organisation.

Union rep thinks it’s fishy too and is doing some digging

Agree with the above. She needs to ensure continuity of service, pensions etc are not adversely affected by moving to the new role.

Sounds like her new contract will be different to her TUPE contract – no doubt worse.

I’ve never resigned when moving within a company/org – I’d get this in writing, ie why.

It would leave you unprotected.

I can’t see any reason why you can’t be offered a new role with new terms. I thought this was fairly standard. But if you resign and take a new contract you risk being on probation for 6 months to 2 years with fewer rights.

I resigned just before Covid hit. After leaving one job my future employer phoned me and said they couldnt take me on. So I went from 12yrs service and 6 months notice to one week notice and potentially no job.

We got it figured but only after a lot of stress. Even now I’m conscious that I’d get no redundancy and 2 weeks notice if anything went wrong.

Sounds like her new contract will be different to her TUPE contract – no doubt worse.

Probably but that’s still not a reason to resign before offer. It’s perfectly acceptable to say if you want this promotion here are the T&Cs, but weird to say we won’t offer till you resign.

Yeah nah that’s dodgy, I’ve always signed an employment contract for any new role before handing in my notice.

She would then become a new employee starting again from day 1 in the eyes of the law. Maybe the new contact is pure shit and she losses benefits. She need to see any new contract before quiting anything

Yeah, sounds dodgy AF.

It’s a promotion, not a new job… there’s no reason to quit, and re-apply (they might decide they don’t Want you and youv’e already resigned).

The only time I’ve pulled a shenniagan like this is when I had an agency worker I wanted to hire full time, but the company didn’t want to pay the agency realese fee, so I fired him and re- hired him full time 30 seconds later.

If you’re working for the same company you dont need to resign.

All they need to do is send you a letter saying from date x, you’ll be working in your new role.
Never been like that for me when i’ve changed roles within organisations.

Your new/old boss will need to have a chat about when you transfer over, but apart from that theres not much for you to do.

TUPE may cause a few complications, so you may need a new “standard” contract, but TUPE only lasts for 2 years anyway.

Thanks all, my wife finally got a more senior HR person who said “you don’t need to resign, it’s a transfer”

Duh!

He’s also sent on a copy of the general contract but they won’t send out the personal bit with pay etc, they just hand it to you on the day.

A little bit weird still, but there’s now enough of an email trail with the union, HR and her new boss to make her feel comfortable with the process.

The council are saying that she needs to resign from her current role before they can give her the offer for the new role.

So who actually said this, and when are they being ‘retrained’?

but they won’t send out the personal bit with pay etc, they just hand it to you on the day.

I still don’t think thats correct, I for one would like to see the bit about pay etc confirmed in writing in my hand.

Yeah unless there’s an email (copied to a personal email address…) or a letter with the formal offer details that would make me uncomfortable (given the HR department is clearly incompetent or scheming), what happens if the contract she’s handed on the day is £15k per annum and 20 days leave inc. statutory holidays? Could she even refuse at that point and just go back to her old role or would that no longer be open?

Sounds like a classically poor (or is it deliberately given how much HR do it?) HR dept.
Definitely need the new pay and working hours stating up front. T and C’s cover basic stuff but not the personal and important bits like pay. An email from the new manager would be sufficient. I had a bit of a to and fro with HR once when someone at our place got a new role and they didn’t give them the pay rise. Sad that it took a union rep to talk to the HR manager about standard procedure for the HR dept. to realise their ‘mistake’.

He’s also sent on a copy of the general contract but they won’t send out the personal bit with pay etc, they just hand it to you on the day.

A little bit weird still, but there’s now enough of an email trail with the union, HR and her new boss to make her feel comfortable with the process.

This is too rather odd…again Mrs_OAB had this with her council. They have used it a few times to keep folk further down payscale than they were entitled too. Either deliberate or incompetence – neither are acceptable.

Sounds to me they are trying a homegrown version of Fire and Re-hire. This is also known as Dismissal and Rengagement and is a practice that the Government were going to clamp down on in a new employment bill but have put it on the back burner recently. Even Bojo was talking about it the other day. In short the employer makes a break in an employees employment and then can alter fundamental parts of their contract. Beware!