On 31 January 2014, new regulations on the Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment (TUPE) came into force, which will protect the employment terms and conditions of employees who are transferred from one organisation to another.
Under the new regulations, businesses will be able to renegotiate terms and conditions in collective agreements one year after a transfer has taken place, provided that the overall change is no less favourable.
Also, micro businesses will be able to inform and consult employees directly when there are no existing appropriate representatives. Under previous TUPE regulations businesses were required to inform, and sometimes also consult, employee representatives such as trade union representatives.
However, for micro businesses with 10 or fewer employees, there are often no representatives, which means that they have to be specifically elected for this purpose, so this change should make this process much less bureaucratic
From now on, the new employer will also be able to engage in pre-redundancy consultation with employees, with the consent of the old employer and contractual changes will be permitted for economic, technical or organisational reasons with the agreement of the employee and / or where a contractual right of variation exists.
Some unions are claiming that the changes will drive down pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers and will weaken protection for them, as well as reducing job security.
However, business groups, such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) have welcomed the changes, saying that they are a “step in the right direction”, although they do not feel that they go far enough and would like to see more done.