John McMullen navigates the Employment Rights Act to find a solution to complex transfers
- ‘Successor’ employers and re-employment orders.
- Transfers between associated employers.
- A baffling question for employees.
Whenever employees are transferred from one employer to another, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006/246) are the practitioner’s first port of call. However, not all cases of transfer of employment involve a TUPE transfer. In such cases the provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA 1996), preserving statutory continuity of employment in certain instances of transfer of employment, may be an important consideration. These provisions apply irrespective of whether there is a TUPE transfer. In this article we discuss two recent cases in this area. The first concerns the power of employment tribunals to order re-engagement of an unfairly dismissed employee, either by the dismissing employer or by a successor of that employer, under ERA 1996, s 115(1). The key legal issue here is what exactly a ‘successor’ means. The second concerns ERA 1996, s 218(6), which preserves an employee’s statutory
