Hello all,

Posting on behalf of a work colleague. Have passed them site details and suggested they register themselves.

The person in question works as a cleaner for a third party company who have a contact with our business.

Our business is part of a much larger group who are currently restructuring.

As part of the restructure, our business is moving from its current facility to a new shared site along with other parts of the organisation.

For this reason our contract with the cleaning company is due be terminated.

This now leaves the cleaner, who has 8 years service at this site, all be it possibly with differing cleaning comapanies.

By this I mean that although the contracted agent has maybe changed it has always been the person holding the position and performing the duties. They have essentially moved with the contact.

They have now been informed that once the closes they are basically redundant.

It is also being claimed they they are not entitled to any redundancy as it not them, her employer (cleaning company) who are making them redundant but us as we the ones moving site.

No other positions are available for them to be relocated / transferred to.

What are their rights in this case ?

Without being certain that they are even an employee, nobody could advise. I would suggest they need to speak to an advice centre directly.

Quick edit on the above.

The contract has been held by the same company for the 8 years in question and the cleaner has been employed and posted here for the duration of this time.

A little further information.

They have been employed with the same company for 8 to 9 years, have only ever been located in this current building.

For the past 4 years plus have been working 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. A total of 30 hrs a week.

They are not sure of they have a written contract etc.

A little further information.

 

They have been employed with the same company for 8 to 9 years, have only ever been located in this current building.

 

For the past 4 years plus have been working 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. A total of 30 hrs a week.

 

They are not sure of they have a written contract etc.

The problem is that many cleaners are on zero hours contacts (workers, not employees) or self employed. We rally cannot guess at this. The differences are enormous, because only employees are entitled too redundancy pay at all, but they're are other issues, for example TUPE, which may apply. If this person posted themselves, and if they knew the answers to some of this, we might be able to help. But giving advice to a third party who doesn't know anything about it isn't going to work.

Now, as thay are employed by a contractor the contractor has a choice of redeploying or redundancy. Problem with this particular sector is that many employees are foreign so dont understand their rights and so are told they are now unemployed as the result of the loss of that contract when that isnt actually the whole story.

Probably not a zero hours contract but TUPE'd many times but thatwont cahnge things as far as rights go. However, start redundancy isnt very generous and employers in this sector like to redeploy and the didmiss for spurious reasons rather than pay up.

Turns out they have a written contract stipulating working hours among some other details.

They have been told there is no chance of redeployment as there are no other sites available and that they will be "made redundant".

It will only be statutory but that is better than nothing the employer first claimed was payable having seen their error.

They are now in line to receive 8 years worth of redundancy along with any outstanding holiday pay etc.

A happy, successful and correct outcome.

Well, correct anyways. Glad that there is certainty for your colleague at least