John is an employment Partner at Spencer West as well as being Visiting Professor of Law at Leeds University Business School and serving on the editorial board of ELA Briefing, the journal of the Employment Lawyers Association. He was previously Head of Employment at Pinsent Masons.
John is one of the UK's leading employment lawyers with a national and international reputation. He is the country's leading expert on TUPE and is involved in a wide range of TUPE related matters, including service provision change, mergers and acquisitions, and public sector and third sector transfers.
He has been variously described as “the King of TUPE” and the “TUPE guru”. He is an expert in redundancies and restructuring and also provides advice to senior executives on termination of employment.
He is also:
- the author of Business Transfers and Employee Rights, the leading work on TUPE. First published in 1987, it is a loose-leaf encyclopedia, known affectionately as the “purple book”, and is subscribed to by all major law libraries and law firms and by the Bar
- the author of Redundancy: The Law and Practice, the leading work on redundancy law
- an editor of Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment Law, commonly known as the practitioner’s “bible” and regularly cited in Court.
In Unionen v Almega Tjänsteförbunden ISS Facility Services AB (Case C-336/15), the question was whether article 3(1) of the Acquired Rights Directive obliged a transferee to take into account service with a transferor when calculating notice periods for termination of employment, or whether such notice periods were only to be calculated by the reference to employment completed with the transferee.
The position was nuanced by the fact that Swedish law (taking advantage of a discretion afforded by article 3(3) of the ARD) only obliges transferees to comply with collective agreements binding transferors for one year from the date of the transfer.
In the present case, the employees were given notice of termination from their employment after this period had elapsed. Advocate General Tanchev, delivering his opinion, considered that the Directive requires a transferee to respect the service an employee has completed with the transferor in calculating the length of service relevant to a redundancy notice period. This is so even if a year has elapsed from the date of the transfer.
Opinions of Advocates General are not binding on the Court of Justice itself. But they are usually followed.
Continue reading
We help hundreds of people like you understand how the latest changes in employment law impact your business.
Please log in to view the full article.
What you'll get:
- Help understand the ramifications of each important case from NI, GB and Europe
- Ensure your organisation's policies and procedures are fully compliant with NI law
- 24/7 access to all the content in the Legal Island Vault for research case law and HR issues
- Receive free preliminary advice on workplace issues from the employment team
Already a subscriber? Log in now or start a free trial