As part of the Coalition Agreement the government is carrying out review of current employment laws during its term in office.
At the beginning of the year, as part of this process, employers and industry bodies were asked by the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation (BIS), which is responsible for the review, to submit their concerns regarding the effectiveness of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE), to help shape a consultation.
In response to the submissions BIS has said it will carry out a consultation on a number of issues raised, including whether legislation could be changed so that if employees are asked to change their place of work, they would not be able to claim unfair dismissal if they were unwilling to go.
Details of the consultation, which BIS said would be carried out "in due course", have not yet been published, however in its response to submissions BIS said that amongst a number of other points it would consult on would be:
"whether an amendment to TUPE would be possible to ensure that a change of location of the workplace following a transfer does not necessarily lead to automatic unfair dismissal, ie, it is capable of constituting an Economic, Technical or Organisational reason entailing changes in the workforce."
Unite national officer Steve Sibbald said the union would be "appalled" at any such change.
He added: "That would be absolutely ridiculous if it were accepted and we would obviously resist that as much as we possibly could. It would effectively mean that you could ask people to transfer to your premises, be it five miles or 30 miles down the road, and if they didn’t want to move they have no rights to claim redundancy or unfair dismissal."
"Whilst we are in the EU the government has to abide by the minimum provisions of TUPE legislation and I’m pretty sure this would cut across those, in which case we would be challenging the government in court."
Sibbald said such an amendment could only benefit employers. "Think of the amount of take-overs we have had in this industry, all covered by TUPE. This would save employers millions and millions and those that pay will be the employees," he added.
Sibbald said that another issue that could potentially be included in the consultation, although no details of this have yet been published, was a move to reduce redundancy consultation periods from 90 to 30 days.
"There was some discussion about this and it would be ridiculous and unworkable and again something that we would strongly oppose," he added.
Other points of TUPE legislation that will be included in the consultation, according to the BIS report, will be:
"whether the 2006 service provision changes should be retained or repealed; whether, generally, liability should pass entirely to the transferee as now, or be held jointly and severally by transferee and transferor; and whether employee liability information should be provided earlier to the transferee.
Sibbald said these points were unlikely to have any impact on the print industry.
A BIS spokeswoman said further details of what would be included in the consultation would be revealed "in due course".
