UKC

For about six years I've been getting my daily paper at a filling station about half a mile down the road. Attached to the filling station was a grocery shop run by a "chain". The filling station was BP so I presume there was some sort of franchise set up between BP and the grocery chain.

Last week I noticed that the grocery shop had the name of another chain above it and that the staff who had been there for years and were always very pleasant, helpful and sociable had all disappeared.

This morning I had reason to get my paper in Morrisons and was served by one of the lads who used to be at the filling station. He was telling me that when the shop was taken over all the staff that had been there were suddenly told that they were redundant and the new owners brought their own staff in.

Seems to me to be a rather underhand way of doing things. I just hope all the others had managed to get jobs as this lad had.

In reply to mypyrex:
Strange, I thought there was some legislation - TUPE or something like that - which forced new / take-over co. owners to re-employ the same staff at same conditions.

Edit: link added:
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1655

In reply to mypyrex:

Many stations are neither owned or operated by either the petrol or shop brand. They are often owned by a third party, who leases the petroleum and shop to the brand and the operating/Management to a forth party. The staff work for the 4th party and at the end of the lease it's all up for grabs again. It's a bit like the PubCO model. There are some variations on this, i'm not saying all stations use this model, just more than you might think.

In reply to mypyrex:

Yep, TUPE should have applied.

In reply to Doghouse:


TUPE only applies where a business is taken over by another. I'm not sure how you know that's what happened in this case?

In reply to hokkyokusei:

TUPE applied when I got made redundant from a big pharma 5 years ago. The company was not being taken over by another. It just wanted to reduce staff numbers in the labs.

In reply to hokkyokusei:


No, it doesn't. It applies to contracts that move from one supplier to another, for example. TUPE does apply, and their terms and conditions of employment should transfer from the old employer to the new one.

Looks like unfair dismissal to me.

In reply to bonebag:

AZ by any chance?

In reply to nniff:

they could have all been temps on zero hour contracts..