Redundancy Question - only person who does my job for 20 yrs

[CraigNewmarket]

Hey all,

Could I be made redundant, I've been at my place of work for 20 years and I'm the only one who does my role. For example if I'm off I'll or on holiday my job simply doesn't get done. But other offices in the same company outsouce the work I do to a external UK company.

Surley the company would find it hard to explain at a tribunal why my job was no longer required after 20 years and instead have outsourced it to another UK company?

I'm sure if I did leave they would use the company the other offices are using for my job.

Thanks all

[Countdown]

I’m not a HR expert but I’m fairly sure they can. It’s happened a couple of times during my career; once we outsourced cleaning to an FM company, and once we outsourced Payroll.

For the cleaners I think TUPE was offered. For Payroll TUPE was offered but it wasn’t practical since the new provider was based 150 miles away.

[ARHarh]

TUPE is the way it will be done, not much you can do about that. Either except it or take redundancy.

[Blown2CV]

why would your job be required if they outsourced it? If you've been doing the same thing without change for 20 years, and you knew that other companies outsource it, did you seriously not see the writing on the wall?

[CraigNewmarket]

ARHarh said:

TUPE is the way it will be done, not much you can do about that. Either except it or take redundancy.

What if the other company doesn't want me though? Because I've been in the same job 20 years I get paid more for the same role.

[CraigNewmarket]

Blown2CV said:

why would your job be required if they outsourced it? If you've been doing the same thing without change for 20 years, and you knew that other companies outsource it, did you seriously not see the writing on the wall?

There's always been the option to outsource my job 20 years ago when they took me on

[Countdown]

CraigNewmarket said:

ARHarh said:

TUPE is the way it will be done, not much you can do about that. Either except it or take redundancy.

What if the other company doesn't want me though? Because I've been in the same job 20 years I get paid more for the same role.

They'd make you redundant on Day 1.

[Muzzer79]

CraigNewmarket said:

Blown2CV said:

why would your job be required if they outsourced it? If you've been doing the same thing without change for 20 years, and you knew that other companies outsource it, did you seriously not see the writing on the wall?

There's always been the option to outsource my job 20 years ago when they took me on

They are under no obligation to take that option though.

They can re-structure, outsource the work and either make you redundant or transfer you under TUPE, depending on the circumstances.

If you transfer under TUPE and the company don’t want you, they will make you redundant after you’ve transferred,

[CraigNewmarket]

Muzzer79 said:

They are under no obligation to take that option though.

They can re-structure, outsource the work and either make you redundant or transfer you under TUPE, depending on the circumstances.

If you transfer under TUPE and the company don’t want you, they will make you redundant after you’ve transferred,

I currently work in the public sector which confuses things further! The company who my job would be outsourced to is private.

[Muzzer79]

CraigNewmarket said:

Muzzer79 said:

They are under no obligation to take that option though.

They can re-structure, outsource the work and either make you redundant or transfer you under TUPE, depending on the circumstances.

If you transfer under TUPE and the company don’t want you, they will make you redundant after you’ve transferred,

I currently work in the public sector which confuses things further! The company doing the outsourcing is private

What do you do?

Are you a member of a union?

[Countdown]

CraigNewmarket said:

Muzzer79 said:

They are under no obligation to take that option though.

They can re-structure, outsource the work and either make you redundant or transfer you under TUPE, depending on the circumstances.

If you transfer under TUPE and the company don’t want you, they will make you redundant after you’ve transferred,

I currently work in the public sector which confuses things further! The company who my job would be outsourced to is private.

I'm not sure why that confuses matters. The public sector has been outsourcing stuff to the Private Sector for decades (resulting in huge improvements and cost savings).

[CraigNewmarket]

Muzzer79 said:

What do you do?

Are you a member of a union?

I'm IT manager and yes

[Sheepshanks]

Countdown said:

CraigNewmarket said:

Muzzer79 said:

They are under no obligation to take that option though.

They can re-structure, outsource the work and either make you redundant or transfer you under TUPE, depending on the circumstances.

If you transfer under TUPE and the company don’t want you, they will make you redundant after you’ve transferred,

I currently work in the public sector which confuses things further! The company who my job would be outsourced to is private.

I'm not sure why that confuses matters. The public sector has been outsourcing stuff to the Private Sector for decades (resulting in huge improvements and cost savings).

One of my daughters works in mental health - supposedly it cost the NHS £250K to train her for 6years and put her through two university based degree type courses. Her job was TUPE'd to one of these random not-for-profit external companies some years ago, and then to another one. She does exactly the same job, and most patients have no idea that the outfit they're dealing with isn't the NHS.

She's kept the same T's & C's and her NHS pension. They were told originally their pay would be frozen unless they switched to the private company T's and C's (the salary would actually be slightly higher but the pension far worse) but so many staff left, and they found it so hard to recruit replacements, that they abandoned that idea.

[Countdown]

Sheepshanks said:

One of my daughters works in mental health - supposedly it cost the NHS £250K to train her for 6years and put her through two university based degree type courses. Her job was TUPE'd to one of these random not-for-profit external companies some years ago, and then to another one. She does exactly the same job, and most patients have no idel that the outfit they're dealing with isn't the NHS.

She's kept the same T's & C's and her NHS pension. They were told originally their pay would be frozen unless they switched to the private company T's and C's (the salary would actually be slightly higher but the pension far worse) but so many staff left, and they found it so hard to recruit replacements, that they abandoned that idea.

That's a standard tactic from the Private sector company which is taking on TUPE staff. because they can't reduce the T&Cs of staff transferring over they freeze them (no payrises or increments) until their own staff have caught up (which could be years down the line). Also if the TUPE staff apply for a promotion they lose all their protected rights.

[Sheepshanks]

Countdown said:

That's a standard tactic from the Private sector company which is taking on TUPE staff. because they can't reduce the T&Cs of staff transferring over they freeze them (no payrises or increments) until their own staff have caught up (which could be years down the line). Also if the TUPE staff apply for a promotion they lose all their protected rights.

In her case she'd have been slightly better off on the private company pay - the big thing was getting them out of the NHS pension, which costs employees more, and employers a fortune. So likely that will be same for OP - he'll have 20yrs of public sector pension. The Government said a few years ago they were going to crack down on this but I don't think anything happened.

Be interesting to see if Labour do anything on this matter. I have no idea what the point of her company is - the only thing I can think of is maybe the CEO and a few top managers get paid more than they could in the NHS. The NHS has been putting these firms out of business by making increased demands on them and at the same time cutting their budgets.

Edited by Sheepshanks on Sunday 30th June 16:23

[Blown2CV]

So you want to leave but you would prefer to get made redundant, is that it

[MBVitoria]

TBH it's pretty obvious why they might want to outsource your role - if you're off sick or on holiday your job doesn't get done.

Business priorities change over time and it might be that this has worked for years but for whatever reason they now need cover throughout the year.

There's probably a cost saving there too.

Depending on the circumstances you would either be made redundant (in which case they need to look at alternative roles) or you might potentially be offered the option of moving to the outsourced company under TUPE.

Either way it might be a good time to review your CV.