What Are T.U.P.E Claims?

When a business is transferred or sold to another entity, or taken over by another entity, a piece of legislation protects the terms and conditions of the employees’ terms of employment.

These regulations are called TUPE or the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. In practice what this means is that you can continue to work in your job, and that all your rights, holiday entitlement, pension and any claims that you’ve made against your existing employer all transfer over to the new employer.

Consultation

Your existing employer has a duty to consult representatives of its workforce. This may be elected members of the group of employees, or it could be a member of the trade union, if you belong to one. This consultation has to include a number of things: firstly why the transfer is occurring, and when it is going to happen; what effect this will have on you as an employee, and whether there is likely to be any reorganising.

If there is, you are entitled to know how this may impact on you. You should be given a reasonable amount of time to be able to consider this information with a view to being able to reach an agreement between the employer and its workforce. Your spokesperson can make representations relating to any proposed reorganisation or other measures, and may for example state reasons why any proposals are rejected.

If You Don’t Want to Transfer Over

If, however, you decide that you do not want to work for the new employer you are entitled to object to the transfer and your contract of employment simply comes to an end. It is not always a good option to do this because you will lose certain rights. In these circumstances, you would lose the right to a redundancy payment, and will not be able to make a claim for unfair dismissal.

If You do Transfer Over

When you transfer over to the new employer, they become obligated to honour the terms of your contract. If they do not, this amounts to a breach of contract. If you discover that there is no job available for you, you may be able to take both your previous and new employers to an Employment Tribunal. If, after the transfer, the new employer wants to cut down on the number of employees, you may be selected for redundancy.

Economic, Technical or Organisational Reasons

If as a result of the business transfer you are dismissed, this will automatically be deemed to be an unfair dismissal, save for in one circumstance. This is if the reason is deemed to be an ETO reason (economic, technical or organisational), in which case it will not be unfair. Redundancy is one such ETO reason.

Once you have transferred over to the new employer, make sure that you receive an up to date employment statement. This should reflect the fact that you now have a new employer and will state that the terms and conditions of your employment remain the same.