In this case, the retailer Boots took a business decision to reduce long-serving workers' double time for Sunday and bank holiday working to time-and-a-half, but the employment tribunal found this to be an unlawful variation of the workers' terms and conditions of employment.
In this test case, the employment tribunal found that an NHS trust had unlawfully amended its pay progression policy to provide that staff would be denied a pay rise if their sickness absence reached a certain level.
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.
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.
The employer in this case wanted to make a blanket variation to its workforce's contractual notice periods. However, the employer got itself into the difficult position of varying the claimant's notice period, while the rest of the workforce refused the change.