can somebody cast an eye over the following?

Its not something I have been involved with before…

“As you are now aware the sale of XYZ to XYZ completed on XYZ

During the past few months we have been planning the next steps. A key decision is that we will bring the businesses together and operate using the same systems and processes. We have also decided to create a services company that will become the employer for all group employees.

In time all employees will transfer to this new Company. These transfers will need to meet the requirements of the Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment (TUPE) legislation and under this legislation we will need to consult with appointed employee representatives.

However, rather than just limit the representatives role to TUPE we would like them to take a wider role and to be consulted on wider people aspects of the bringing together of the two businesses including, for example, plans for organisational change and harmonisation of terms and conditions.”

“We’re not sure whether to get rid of staff from the existing company or the one we just took over. Their T’s and C’s are worse than ours so we’ll be moving every one onto the new companies t’s and c’s rather than giving them ours.”

[edit] sorry if it sounds negative but sound slike a general shake up rather than a ‘we’re just going to bring them under our wing and make relatively few changes’

Hang on, TUPE’ing your own employee’s when taking over another company?

That smacks immediately of they will be thinning down own employee’s at minimal redundancy payouts (minimise redundancy spend).

What’s the question? Looks like a fairly standard response at the moment.

Sounds like they’re rubbering up before they bend you all over to me.

Company I work for does a lot of acquisitions but they’ve not done that (creating a new umbrella corp), I can’t actually see the reason for it myself. It’s not to make redundancies easier (from both companies) as that’s simple enough to do anyway and TUPE protects your T&Cs so they can’t suddenly just change everything by creating another company and transferring everyone to it. So struggling to see the point of it myself (unless there’s legal/tax/shareholder etc. reasons for doing it rather than just to shaft employees).

It’s a polite way of saying “your screwed!”

Yes, they have mentioned there may be some redundancies due to duplication of roles across the 2 firms.

My question was more around ‘the creation of a services company that will become the employer for all group employees’ – so they are creating a separate new entity?

I expect we will only get statutory redundancy pay.

all pretty normal stuff i think.

Quite common to create new holding company, or even a series of them, and everyone from both gets TUPE’d into one of the new companies. Especially if the 2 companies are large and have a whole number of subsidiaries and they want to move divisions and business areas about for reporting reasons.

Para 2 is just a statement of fact – they do have to do this.

Para 3 is saying, having gone through the bother of finding employee reps, we want to keep them in position to rubber stamp the other changes we want to make to T&C’s in the future for reasons “not related to the transfer” because that would be illegal.

Yes, they have mentioned there may be some redundancies due to duplication of roles across the 2 firms.

Instead of having 100×15 weeks of redundancy payments you can go to 50×2 weeks. (maths out but you know).

A friend worked for Royal Bank of Scotland, a few divisions moved into a new company (newly created)- everyone TUPE’d over and almost everyone made redundant shortly after.

They are advising you that a new company will be formed by the merger.

Your existing T’s & C’s will be protected when your employment is transferred to the new company.

They will request (or appoint) employee representatives to attend meetings to provide 2-way feedback of information on progress, and to channel queries from the workforce.

Been through this a couple of times, and am again currently. This in itself doesn’t change anything for you other than the name of your employer which you will be advised of seperately by letter.

P.S. It’s a good opportunity to try and get union recognition, having been an employee rep through the process (and fought for and won union recognition) more traction was gained as a union rep.

Only real advice I can give is to make sure that if you do sign any new contract that your start date is the one when you joined the company, not when you signed the new contract.

I thought under TUPE your years of service (for redundancy) were carried over? Also I’d be surprised if it were to alter the redundancy terms as if they are above statutory requirements surely they’ll fall under TUPE protection as well?
For those that think TUPE is easy to get around, it really isn’t if my company’s experience is anything to go by. It took years to align some benefits and even now there’s all different O/T rates depending on which company you came from.

Correct

thanks for the info folks – all useful stuff.

The company mrs rocket works for did some TUPE’ing a while back

As above your t&cs are transferred ‘as is’ to the new company who can then decide whether to offer you a different job with a new set of t&cs or make you redundant under your existing t&cs

In the real world it meant that some people volunteered to be TUPE’d and got jobs at the new company. Some people chose redundancy. Those that remained were offered new t&cs in their existing jobs

There’s a variety of reasons why they might be creating the new services company, most of them not sinister.

T&Cs will by and large be protected (the most notable exception being pension arrangements, so that might be an area to pay close attention to) as will continuity of service, i.e. if you worked for “Oldco” for 10 years, and get made redundant by “Newco” after five minutes, your length of service for redundancy purposes (and for eligibilty to go to tribunal if it gets messy) will be based on 10 years service, not five minutes.

If you want some ill-informed speculation about the reasons for the “services company” arrangement, let us know what industry you’re in and we’ll make some spurious guesses.

Is it, perchance, an accountancy practice?

That is all very standard verbage to be honest and in itself nothing to get concerned about. There will inevitably be changes over time otherwise people wouldnt buy and sell companies and our natural instinct is to fear this but it doesnt necessarily have to be negative. Progress, on the whole, is a positive thing but so much depends upon the business leadership, their values and agenda. My advice would be not to worry about anything you cant influence and wait and see what happens, if you want to know something make sure your chosen representatives have the kahunas to ask the questions and get answers. If you openly engage with the company you never know it could be a good thing – any business acquiring assets at this time is probably a place worth sticking with as long as you can.

They’re preparing the TUPE bus.

You just need to make sure you’re on it when it leaves the station.

So two or more sites amalgamating together, so one or more sites will go along with staff, or youll get transfered to a new site, and dont like the traveling and leave.

companies do it all the time.

Either way company saves a shed load of cash.

All you’re T & C’s and start date are protected under Tupe regs and they shouldn’t change them. But, also under Tupe regs, if its for the benefit of the company or they have cash flow issues they can change you’re T & C’s whenever they want. They just have to say the company would struggle and possibly close. Every rule that protects the worker, there’s one the company can use to reverse it, hence why some European countries don’t recognise it.

I have been Tupe transferred from a large print company to an agency parading themselves as a services and management company.

we are split across 3 sites – south, middle, north – all more than 100 miles apart – I am in the middle, which is the smaller of the offices – I guess it will be our office that they close.. 🙁