Redundancy & TUPE

[Pinky99]

The company I work for has various contracts. One of our contracts is going back 'in House' to the company we were doing the work for. As a result the people working on that contract have been given notice of TUPE and if they cannot be deployed within our company on the 1/9/6 they will be transferred to this other company and then made redundant (company who is taking the contract back is over 300 miles away so employees will not be going with the contract)
Anyhow - the question I have is one of the employees is seconded into a different area until December, the job she is seconded from won't exist from 1/9. How does this affect her employment as she has been told she could still be made redundant in December after her secondment is finished however from Sep she won't actually have a job to be seconded from. Would the company not have to agree that if she is not transferred under TUPE on the given date that they are keeping her as their employee?
Hope this makes sense!!

[Catso]

I would have said that you don't 'get notice' of TUPE. TUPE is the transferring of your existing rights as an employee to employment in another company, when your old company is sold or taken over or agrees a transfer of employees.

I'm not sure I understand the situation you're describing, but I think you're saying that the employee will be kept on (from September to December), but in a different role to that pre-September? If so, then she could still be made redundant on the basis that both her roles no longer exist. Or transferred to the other company, which is when TUPE would apply.

As an aside, it seems a bit to transfer all these employees to the other company solely to make them redundant.

[buildersmate]

It may seem strange Catso, and it doesn't make it any easier on the employees, but it is the way things work. When a company bids for an existing contract and displaces the incumbent contractor, they take on the TUPE liability for existing staff engaged in contract delivery. If they then intend to deliver the contract another way, they may decide to declare redundancies, and they have the financial liability that ensues. They would have factored it into their bid price

[Catso]

I suppose so - when you put it like that it makes more sense.