The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that employees who resigned after being faced with a change of place of work to a different part of London because of a TUPE transfer were constructively dismissed.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that the dismissal of employees transferred to a company that engaged individuals only under a franchise agreement could amount to an economic, technical or organisational reason (ETO) for dismissal entailing changes to the workforce.
The employer in this case fell into the trap of assuming that, as long as it waited for a while (one year in this case) after a TUPE transfer, it could detrimentally alter the contractual benefits of employees who had transferred, in a bid to harmonise its workforce's terms and conditions.
Chris McAvoy, Sarah Wade, David Rintoul, Helen Corbett and Kristin Aarvik are associate solicitors at Addleshaw Goddard LLP. They round up the latest rulings.
The Court of Appeal has held that, for there to be an automatic unfair dismissal under TUPE, there does not need to have been a particular transfer or transferee in existence or in contemplation at the time of the dismissal.
The Court of Appeal has held that the transfer from a company in administration does not lead to an exemption from automatic employee transfer under reg.8(7) of TUPE.
In this case, the employment tribunal had to decide the exceptionally difficult issue of whether or not employees who were TUPE transferred to a company that engaged individuals only under a franchise agreement were unfairly dismissed. Unsurprisingly, the panel members were divided on their reasoning and there is expected to be an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has confirmed that an agreed variation of an employment contract following a TUPE transfer is effective where the transfer is not the sole or principal reason for the variation.