What isTUPE?

TUPE вЂ“ What is it and whatвЂ™s its purpose?
The acronym TUPE is much banded about by employers today. Its full title вЂ“ which not many people know - tells you a lot about what it is and its purpose.

The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 (TUPE) is United Kingdom legislation that arose out of the European UnionвЂ™s Acquired Rights Directive.

The primary purpose of the regulations is to provide employers with a legal mechanism to transfer business interests to and from each other when buying and selling companies (undertakings). It ensures that deals can be done that provide the employers with legal protection of the "acquired rights" bought and sold. This includes the property, the plant and the people.

TUPE is not about the protection of employment conditions. That is why "Protection of Employment" is in brackets in the title. The Acquired Rights Directive did contain the provision for transferred conditions of employment to be protected for 1 year from the date of the business transfer. Unfortunately, when the TUPE regulations were created by the former Tory government, they dropped this provision.

So the TUPE regulations provide no protection for employees terms and conditions after day one of any transfer.

Employers are free to change terms and conditions in accordance with contract law. This requires mutual agreement between the parties вЂ“ employer and employee. However, if the employer decides to make a change unilaterally, the only recourse the employee has in law is to resign and claim constructive dismissal at an Employment Tribunal. This means giving up your job in the hope of getting limited compensation for the employerвЂ™s wrongdoing. Moreover, employees will only be successful with an application if the change is deemed to be "fundamental", an example would be a cut in pay but this is for the Tribunal to decide in each case.

You can see why most employees who have been transferred under TUPE regard it as worth about as much as two p!

Another important point about TUPE is it does not cover the transfer of an employees occupational pension rights. Why not, you will ask. Because business transfers are a major opportunity for employers to ditch expensive final salary occupational pension schemes, and replace them with private money purchase schemes where the employers contributions are either substantially reduced or removed altogether. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) have recently reported that in this way the average cost to an employee of a change from a final salary scheme to an alternative represents a pay cut of ВЈ40 per week, without taking into account any effects of the employee bearing all the risk.

In the privatisation and contracting out of public services, the use of TUPE has led to the creation of a two-tier workforce with employees in the same undertakings working on the same job being employed on differing terms and conditions of employment. A survey by the public service union UNISON shows some startling facts about cuts to employees conditions by the introduction of the two-tire workforce under TUPE. 62% said pay was worse. 58% said sick pay was worse. 73% said annual leave was worse. 51% said pension scheme was worse. 44% said job security was worse.

Moving a bit nearer to home, since the transfer of our engineering training members from BT to e-peopleserve (a separate company now called Accenture) under TUPE their sick pay entitlement has been cut in half and the second instalment of the 2001/2002 pay rise paid to BT employees has not been given to staff in e-peopleserve.

Lastly, business transfers under TUPE weaken union organisation. The creation of new companies (undertakings) with separate legal identities mean that under the anti-trade union laws workers, even if in the same union, can no longer support each other by taking lawful industrial action. Additionally, union recognition under TUPE only covers the employees transferred, not any others. De-recognition of the union and any parts of collective agreements not incorporated into employment contacts can be carried out by employers after transfer, when the unionвЂ™s ability to act collectively is weakened.

The EC Acquired Rights Directives (77/187/EEC) are the basis of similar regulations throughout the EC. They set a standard mirrored by many other Western economies. Whilst each EC state has enacted the directive via its own legislature, much of the detail is covered by Case Law through the European Courts, the decisions of which are binding on all member states.

In the UK the provisions are contained in the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 (TUPE!).

Purpose

The regulations preserve employeesвЂ™ terms and conditions when a business or undertaking or part of one is transferred to a new employer. Employers cannot specify exclusion from protection in employeesвЂ™ contracts. The regulations are NOT in place to provide commercial protection for incoming suppliers ie вЂњTUPE says you must hand over the staffвЂќ.

Regulations provide

Staff considered part of the undertaking automatically become employees of the new employer on the same terms and conditions. Continuity is preserved as are terms and conditions. One exception being pension rights.
Staff representatives have a right to be informed about the transfer. They must also be consulted about the measures which either employer intends to take concerning affected employees.

no clue sounds like some weird food

did you mean tupee? thats a wig

tupe is to do with protecting workers rights in the likes of say a buiness being taken over ect it ensures you get all the entitlments you had with your old company ie wages holidays ect

TOBACCO USE AND PREVENTION EDUCATION

It is the Terms and Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Act.

This is usually used when a company is transferring to new owners as it is illegal to make existing staff redundant to make way for new staff currently working for the new organisation.

It basically means that your contract is transferred over to the new employer and you would work to EXACTLY the same terms and conditions as you were previously. Once the takeover is completed your contract of employment is deemed to have started with the new company at the same date you started with the old company.

For example, I started woking for a Texaco in 2004. In 2006 we were taken over by Pace under TUPE. Once the takeover was completed, it was deemed that I had been working for Pace since 2004.

All your existing holiday entitlement is also carried over to the new employer.

A DTI employment regulation???

It is to do with employment law - take a look at this...

http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/emplaw/tupe/tupe.htm

Basically it's where the staff from company A are transferred to company B when company B takes over company A's business.

It ensures that the existing terms and conditions of employment are transfered with the employee. Once transferred, the employees can then be offered a change of contract to change these conditions.

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