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Northern Ireland
The Manchester College v Hazel and Huggins [2012]
Published on: 07/09/2012
Issues Covered:
Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE)
Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Background The claimants‟ employment was transferred to the respondent under TUPE, who then sought cost savings through voluntary redundancies and pay cuts. The claimants were assured that their jobs were safe and were offered new employment contracts on reduced pay which they refused to sign. The claimants were then dismissed. They subsequently agreed to these new contracts and continued in employment. However they sued for unfair dismissal.The Employment Tribunal found that the reason for the dismissals was not to effect changes to the workforce; rather they were for economic, technical or organisational reasons and were connected with the transfer of employment. It further held that the time to achieve staff reductions was passed by the time the appellants were dismissed; thus the changes were to effect harmonisation. The Tribunal ordered re-engagement at the same salaries the appellants were on prior to the transfer. The EAT found that the Tribunal was entitled to find that the change to terms and conditions of employment was to effect harmonisation and that there was no real change to the workforce in relation to ETO requirements. The EAT also held that the issue of redundancy had been resolved by the measures taken by the respondent by the time the letters were issued to the claimants. They were therefore entitled to rely on the assurance that their jobs were not at risk. Furthermore, the Tribunal was entitled to order reengagement at the old salaries. As the Respondent had indicated "they could handle it" if forced to accept the reengagement, its argument that re-engagement could cause workplace unrest was thus rejected.The EAT dismissed as “misconceived” the respondent‟s argument that, "...where a finding under Polkey is made it is not just and equitable to order re-engagement." It went on to state “The compensatory award is affected by the jurisprudence following Polkey. It says nothing about when a reengagement award is made."52http://bit.ly/OYo2ap

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 07/09/2012
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