Can an employer now simply sell your contract on to someone else as if you're a piece of meat? I thought if an employer substantially changed the conditions of your contract - and I would say a different 'owner' would be a substantial change - the employee had the right to refuse to sign the new contract. Any legal bods out there? What's the situation, please?
Are you in the UK? I have no idea what the law is like in Vietnam. The simple answer is usually no. An employer cannot substantially change the conditions of your contract without your consent. However, if your employer is a company and the owner of the company sells it, then your employment contract will still be with the company- so you do not have a new employer! Even though, admittedly, it may look like you do because you have a new "boss". Your options are fact dependent- the best thing for you to do is to go to your local solicitors and speak to them, with your employment contract.
Not totally sure, but from what I can recall if 75% of your current job role transfers to a new owner of your contract then your statuatory rights and conditions are protected by law and the new "owner" of the contract must abide by those terms under which the contract transferred. A different "owner" is obliged to meet the terms and conditions of contract which transferred over when they "purchased" the business. TUPE protects the rights of the employee. In reality, Whittaker could waive his rights under TUPE, walk out without any statuatory benefits and then leave himself open to a law suit by Newco for breach of contract. Not sure if Newco would do this but they seem pretty determined to enforce it if the press reports are to be believed.
Sorry, I wasn't thinking about me - I was thinking of Whittaker and how the owner of the new Rangers says that he paid for the players as part of the deal.
Ah, well that's a slightly different problem to what I assumed you were having! A good summary of what we do know about the case here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18569993 My guess is that it is just sabre-rattling by Newco and Whittaker will be able to play without him paying any "compensation" to Rangers. (Emphasis that it will be Whittaker who is liable, not Norwich). Do bear in mind that there is something of a contradiction going on with perceptions of footballers- people are up in arms about a club trying to exercise its rights (as it sees it) under a contract, yet at the same time people scream blue murder when they perceive players as having too much power to be able to force a transfer...
i'm not going to pretend i understand any of this but one of the parties, either the players or the newco, have been very badly advised. i suspect the players can currently afford better legal advice than the club!
law is on the side of the employee with an implied right to earn a living. I was once part of a deal where my company bought a competitor, the sales director of the company we bought did not like us and walked away from his contract to join a direct competitor even though he had clauses in his contract saying he could not do this, our solicitor told us not to bother trying to stop him as he had the right to earn a living, we would be seen as the big bad employer and the court would find in his favour and we would be better putting our efforts into getting to the customers he might approach first which we did. This in my humble opinion was worse than the Rangers thing as the company we purchased was not in administration and we clearly took on the assest and employees under TUPE
I bet Whittaker has moved into the area and is currently pre season training with NCFC. RangersNewco would have to get a paydayloan or use oceanfinance ("well we put all our loans under one payment and will only be paying it for the next 100 years") to afford any silk to advise them.
The newco has absolutely no case at all and they know it. What they're doing is trying to scare some of the players into staying. It's a new company, their old company no longer exists and they are free to walk away unless they have accepted wages from the new company, in which case it gets a little more complicated.
i suppose the problem is do they count Whitaker as an asset? i don't really know much about the whole thing, but if newco bought the 'assets' of Rangers football club surely that mean the players as well because they could be sold? either way, i'm sure there is a human rights law somewhere that can be used!
I'm amazed we haven't had a load of rangers fans on our board raging about Whittaker Guess its pretty low down on their list of problems atm
TUPE is a red herring in this case - it was set up to protect employees rights rather than employers. Pre this legislation unscrupulous companies could erode their employees benefits such as holiday/pay rate and redundancy entitlement by transferring them to a new company with a slightly different shareholding structure. Old Rangers have materially breached their players contracts by reducing their wages. Assuming that the players have not accepted payment from NewCo I cannot see what Green's argument is. If they buy the assets of Rangers then that is all well and good but you can't "buy" people and as previous posters have said generally if it were to go to tribunal the law invariably supports the individuals right to work rather than the company. Purely sabre-rattling by Green.
Your right that you can't sell people, but you can sell their registration! which in effect is what you do in any normal transfer deal, you're not selling the person just their registration to play for a club.
Employees can't be considered assets, this was tested in he European court, this is why rangers was only valued at 5m despite players being worth being far greater than that. I get the impression this is why Green is being so aggressive in wanting his players to move contracts over, he could recoup the cost of buying rangers by selling the players however they're walking and he's not getting the money back that he hoped.
