Redundancies Or Transfer For Economic Reasons. Risky Business

The purpose of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) is to safeguard the employment rights of employees when a business is sold. If a person employed immediately before the relevant transfer of a business is dismissed for a reason connected with the transfer, the dismissal is automatically unfair unless the employer can show that it was for ‘economic, technical or organisational reasons entailing changes in the work-force’.

In Dynamex Friction Ltd. v Amicus, the Court of Appeal had to decide whether the Employment Tribunal (ET) had been justified in concluding that employees who were dismissed by the administrator of a company had been dismissed for economic reasons rather than for a reason related to the transfer of the business. Read more