Transfers of employment

Where business transfers take place, contracts of employment, including sick pay provisions, should transfer under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) as amended by the Collective Redundancies and Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.

The Acas guide to handling TUPE transfers gives the example of a worker whose employer lost its contract to another company. After the transfer, the new employer announced that it had harmonised the worker’s sickness pay and annual leave entitlements with its own “to make the administration simpler”. But the worker had not been consulted, and calculated that he would be financially worse off. He resigned and successfully claimed constructive unfair dismissal (see page 68). His dismissal was found to be automatically unfair because the reason for the changes had been the transfer.

TUPE should also protect employees off sick (or on any kind of leave) who belong to the group of transferring employees. They transfer automatically on the transfer date, even if they are unaware of it, and the fact that they were not at work carrying out their activities immediately before the transfer is irrelevant (Fairhurst Ward Abbotts v Botes Building [2004] IRLR 304).