The TUPE Regulations are designed to protect the rights of employees when a new employer takes over the business, or the service contract, on which they are employed.
Business Transfers and Contracting – A practical guide to TUPE
is essential reading for HR professionals and managers who want to understand, in simple and practical terms, this notoriously complex area of law.
As well as giving clear advice on matters you need to be thinking about prior to, during and after the transfer, the Guide also contains various model letters and documents for you to use.
Complex
TUPE has a reputation for being a complex and daunting area of employment law. Certainly, some unclear language is used in the Regulations. Also, a number of the European Court decisions on the Directive, which affect the way our tribunals apply TUPE, have been particularly opaque and difficult to understand.
Two simple ideas
Underlying TUPE, and the Directive on which it is based, are actually two simple and relatively uncontroversial ideas. The first is that, when a new employer acquires a business, the rights that the employees of that business have in their jobs should be protected as against the new employer.
So, in most respects, the new employer steps into the old employer’s shoes. The second idea is that the transfer of a business will go more smoothly if the workforce is kept informed and is consulted about matters that will affect it.