The Mock Turtle

As I’ve mentioned my company has gone through chapter 11 and has now been carved into bits and sold. The company buying my bit is a competitor who has stated they will retain staff, prob about 50% of the current headcount. Our HR is consulting with lawyers as to whether Tupe will apply for employees who are retained. I know nothing about it but after a quick read of acas I can’t see why it wouldn’t, does anyone know?

My knowledge is very out of date but I would be surprised if it didn’t apply.

Same.

It sounds like it should do.

It sounds like it should do.

Thank you

Still no update on how this will work. It seems that the situation is complicated because it’s an asset sale not a company sale so they’ve bought our data library, software etc and appear to want to carry on the projects which are currently live but the sale does not include the legal entity so no one seems to know where we stand at the moment. It goes before the Texas bankruptcy court on Monday so we should know something by then.

Gah, it seems TUPE definitely doesn’t apply. Still no idea what’s actually going to happen.

I am going to use this thread to brain dump, please feel free to scroll past.

So tupe definitely doesn’t apply but that at least means we know where we stand. The court hearing has been pushed back to Thursday and assuming that goes as expected they will start the redundancy process. The company is being wound up so everyone will be made redundant. We have been told we’ll be paid for July but no one seems to know if there’s enough money for August.

The company buying us does want some staff as they want to keep current projects live (clients are too big to piss off) and run them on our software. They might interview or might just take specific project teams as a job lot. Who knows how to play job negotiations? They are apparently not keen on remote working, at least half my team are spread out round the country.

It feels like some sort of spontaneous middle of the night Amazon purchase that they haven’t really thought through

That all sounds very stressful. Are you going to start looking for other jobs or see how it all pans out?

I’m going to see how it pans out for now. It should be relatively quick if the new company want to carry on existing projects and I have 20+ years service so a decent whack of redundancy to tide me over if necessary.

The court hearing got pushed back again to Monday so consultation still hasn’t started. The new company did a teams presentation on Weds and said they will have job offers out by the end of next week. The presentation felt a bit odd. At times they sounded a bit desperate to appeal and some of what they said sounded very basic but it may be that they’re used to presenting to investors rather than technical staff.

At the moment the big question is whether there’s enough money to pay anyone for August. Hopefully they will announce something on Monday or I can see everyone downing tools anyway.

In today’s unsurprising news the court date has slipped by another week. Rumours are now rife about job offers and numbers and there is no motivation whatsoever.

Finally some definite information. All job offers have now been made with the exception of some transition contractor positions. I haven’t yet heard who has an offer but I’ve heard the new company is very office based so I suspect they have offered full time jobs to people living locally and will offer short term contractor positions to people further away who they think they might need to get projects finished.

I don't understand how it is not TUPE as you say there are contracts to be delivered and isn't that a service? Part or all of an organisation is transferred ownership or a service.

All we were told was that it was considered from the perspective of service provision as well as asset transfer and due to the nature and structure of the service as well as the location of the business it doesn’t apply.

ETA Looking at acas I think it might be because it’s individual short term (3-6 month) contracts rather than an ongoing service.

Blimey Tex, how stressful for you! Why can't companies sort this kind of thing without making it such a hooha for the people involved?

Who knows Lily? It really shouldn’t be this hard.