Hi,
My employer (large logistics firm) has lost the contract I work on. They have lost the contract to another logistical firm who are moving operations 140 miles away (2h 45m commute)…
I have not been offered another position within the company I work for – only the position within the firm that has won the contract.
What is the likelihood of my employer having to offer me a redundancy package?
I have been with my employer for nearly 25 years.
Many thanks
Hi Daryl. Thanks for your comment.
Under TUPE your employment transfers automatically to the new employer, with all your terms intact – including length of service.
However, clearly it’s not possible for you to commute 140 miles to work. Such a huge distance probably amounts to an “economic, technical or organisational reason entailing a change in the workforce” for TUPE purposes. That’s basically a redundancy situation.
As such, we’d expect that one or other organisation will talk to you about redundancy – sometimes which employer does this will depend on what they’ve agreed amongst themselves, or with the client organisation for which they’re providing logistics services. Based on what you’d told us, we expect that you’d be redundant because of the disappearance of your workplace, where the replacement workplace is so unreasonably far away that it isn’t a suitable alternative for you.
Given your long service, if you were made redundant, you’d be entitled to the maximum statutory redundancy payment, and maximum statutory minimum notice (or whatever your contract of employment says). Some employers will pay additional compensation as well, and you’d usually be required to sign a settlement agreement to get that compensation.
You could enquire whether your old employer has any suitable alternative vacancies for you to avoid redundancy, or if the new one has anything nearer, but assuming there’s nothing available, we suspect that this would be a redundancy situation.
