Thursday 10 August 2006

he's been happy with the company, they've treated him real fair....

As of midnight on Sunday, I will be transferred from one company to another. Unlike football players, a transfer fee has not changed hands, I most definitely will not be getting a signing-on bonus and an increase in wages is out of the question.

I had a choice though: I was told that my job was being transferred, and I had to choose to either accept this, or be deemed to have resigned. I wasn't going to resign (not in the short-term), so here I am.

As best I can tell, I am being shafted.

My basic terms & conditions are protected by law, which means that my salary can't get any smaller, I get the same holiday entitlement and I will only have to work the same number of hours a week as I do currently. Stuff like that. That's good, but it's far from the whole story. Amongst several things that I will be losing, my Private Health cover will cease when I transfer. As I've been undergoing various diagostic tests for the WTs, that's quite a big deal. Because I have claimed for it on my existing cover, there's a very serious danger that the WTs will be excluded from any new insurance I take out. Even if it is covered (and I think I can swing that as I haven't been diagnosed with anything), I am looking at being a couple of thousand pounds a year out of pocket if I want to keep any sort of cover. That's pretty rubbish really, especially as I am being forced into this position through no choice or action of my own.

The transfer process itself has been a shambles of non-communication, culminating with my discovery today that my current employer has been busy sending update emails out to a mailing list that none of the people being transferred are actually on. Muppets. Oh, and my career prospects are probably just that little bit worse too, as I leave a proper international IT company and join a UK retailer. I'm even getting a crappier computer to work with.

Still, on the plus side, my exit interview tomorrow finishes at 1pm, and my new employment doesn't start until Monday..... so I guess that means I get to start my weekend early, right?

I think it might be time for a new job. I don't have to take this shit.

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(I realise there's other stuff happening in the world at the moment, but you can read about that stuff here. Nice to have you back Foxy.)

8 comments:

  1. Time to get a new job...in London?

    ?:)

    *anticipating some gigs with the tall man behind her for once*

    My selfishness aside, I hope you have a great weekend, and that the transfer goes ok so you can reconsider your options once there.

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  2. Naughty. Your employer has a requirement to conduct a "full and meaningful consultation with employees at the earliest practicable time."

    Failure to conduct meaningful consultation can result in compensation of up to 13 weeks' pay.

    And if your health cover is part of your conditions of employment, then the new company has to provide it. If they don't, you can claim for constructive dismissal.

    I'd spend your last morning googling for TUPE if I were you

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  3. thanks Ian, but we have been subject to a formal consultation - which ironically involves very little consultation at all. The medical insurance isn't a contractual benefit, and therefore my new employer has no legal obligation to provide it. The angle we've been working is that they at least have a moral obligation to provide a comparable solution. Forget my situation, there's a colleague of mine whose wife is undergoing treatment for cancer on this insurance. In theory her treatment stops on Sunday and her condition becomes pre-existing, meaning that most insurance companies either won't touch her, or will charge an enormous premium (he was quoted about £5,000 a year). That's just not acceptable. The frustrating thing is making yourself heard in this whole process. Most people don't listen - but there are some people who do, and they have been working on our behalf.... (I'm taking a bottle of champagne in tomorrow to give to my employee rep - she's been brilliant throughout)

    I'm familiar with TUPE - more so than I would ever want to be. I joined my present company in a TUPE transfer about 2 1/2 years ago. Oh, did I mention that the company I was transferred from then is the same company that is transferring me in next week?

    *sigh*

    ST

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  4. "I think it might be time for a new job. I don't have to take this shit."

    Oooh, this is my new mantra!

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  5. That really sucks! I hope you find something better soon!

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  6. I sympathise. We are in the midst of a restructuring and job evaluation (in fact, we have been in the midst of it for over a year now) and it's all rather hideous. The communication is absolutely minimal and in such jargon that no-one understands it anyway (and before you ask, no, this does not fall under my corporate comms remit!) which means everyone feels completely unsettled. Thus far this year, I have had three different managers and am looking at a fourth soon.

    On the plus side, it pretty much means no-one knows what I'm up to and I can do whatever I please!

    Hopefully something will come up for you soon. In the meantime, make sure you do as little as possible.

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  7. Hmm, comics comment to come.

    Have you tried phoning ACAS (http://www.acas.org.uk/)?

    They offer a free anonymous information line for help on matters like this.

    You can also try http://www.lawontheweb.co.uk/asknoquestions.htm for some freebie advice.

    Most of the time your rights are completely bound up in unreadable red tape but I've found that ACAS can shed some options to try and that lawontheweb have offered, whilst not actual legal help, some advice or leverage to get our HR department to listen to our issues.

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  8. You have definitely been shafted. I've been made redundant twice, both times I changed jobs almost straight away.

    Have you been checking out JobServe? August is a quiet month jobswise but still... Losing your health cover sucks donkey balls. Official!

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