TUPE and differences in pay

[Kerrierussell]

Hello, I've recently taken over a management role and recently been asked by a group of existing employees to look into a rather sore subject to them.
Before I was appointed the company I work for took over work from a rival company and in doing so invoked TUPE on their workers, these workers do the exact same job with the exact same role as our companies existing workforce, the only two noticeable differences are their T&C's which are different and also their pay which is £15,000 a year MORE than our existing workforce.
The new employees have been here for around 2 years now, and I have been asked by the group of existing employees to look at wether it's fair or not to be expected to work alongside this newer workforce doing the exact same job for £15,000 a year less??

 

[STDFR33]

http://m.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4198

 

[Kerrierussell]

Interesting, so after reading on TUPE we cannot detrementally change the new employees contracts to harmonise? There is no difference in experience or job description so according to that ACAS guide they should be paid the same? Which begs the question do the new employees need their pay bumped up.
Seems a conflict of interest, the gov are saying at the workplace everyone should have equal pay for equal work, but that TUPE means new employees taken on (even if they are significantly higher paid) must be kept on those T&C's brought over on.
Sorry, I seem to be adding more questions

 

[ethical PR]

Sounds like you need to speak to your HR team as they should understand how this works. If your company doesn't have in-house expertise then it sounds as if it would benefit from speaking to an HR consultant/firm with experience in this area.

 

[Newchodge]

The transferred employees are protected from changes that are a result of the transfer. Your old employees accepted jobs at the rate they accepted. Harmonising downwards would clearly be a change as a result of the transfer. If the old employees are disgruntled, maybe they should organise and seek parity with the transferred staff.

 

[Kerrierussell]

Yes it seems this has been simering before I got here as they have discussed with the new staff about the issue and were (understandably) met with a reluctance to move away from any perks they have over the existing staff.
The other suggestion made by the existing staff is that at pay negotiations if say the 'going rate' is a 2% increase then the newer employees get this while existing employees get for eg 3% till the salaries are more or less aligned.
It seemed that the biggest grievance was indeed the fact that with each pay increase the newer employees are getting further and further away in terms of pay, with some even suggesting this was in fact discriminatory in itself with regards to the equal pay for equal work rule.

 

[Kerrierussell]

Another avenue me and the management team have discussed is that due to the fact the company is struggling slightly we could start a round of redundancies which I'm sure a few older employees would take, then we could offer an alternative contract to everyone to re apply for their jobs thus harmonising everyone? Is that feasible or even legal?

 

[Newchodge]

There is no equal pay for equal work rule. The only rule is equality of gender, so if the reason for the unequal pay is gender, it is illegal. That is not the case here.

The redundancy route may be feasible, unless you are selecting people for redundancy because of their TUPE status. If you seek volunteers, it may work.


There is no right to a pay increase, so you could offer differential increases, you just can't odder decreases.