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Conflict of Interest ?

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Back in December last year the organisation I worked for was taken over by a well known company. We were all transferred over on a TUPE agreement, and initially all was fine until April of this year.

Then four members of staff were told that there was a problem - saying there was a 'conflict of interest. Two members of staff were sisters, two members of staff were married. The company is now stating that the sisters and the married couple, must now be split up / transferred to different workplaces.

It does not directly involve myself, but I'm having to sit back and watch this upheavel unfold, especially as we are short staffed !

Now back in Dec 16 when we got TUPE'd over - the present employer obviously had a list of current staff, of which two had the same surnames :huh:

and nothing was said, no question asked, until April.

Has anyone else witnessed anything similar to this ?

All staff who are not affected have pleaded with the current employers not to split up the married couple / sisters - as there has been no 'conflict of interest'

Does anyone know of any avenues they can explore to stop this ?

Why did it take them from Dec 16 - April 17 to realise they were employing related people, and that action needed to be taken ?

The four people involved are good hardworking people, the rest of us are 100% behind their will to stay working within the team.

There has been 'no conflict of interest' whilst they have been working together, and the company freely admits that.

We have explored avenues through HR etc but they seem intent on splitting these 4 people up.

Does anyone have any ideas / thoughts / suggestions of what else they could do to stop this madness ?

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Only ever heard the term conflict of interest used when you have an employee who has a second job and this some how conflicts for example they are working with a direct competitor.

 

When you say different workplaces are we taking sane site but different offices or as in a different location completely?

 

When I worked for Dixons they had a policy of splitting up people on to different teams if they were dating. But it was within the same building and department - not transferral to a different location. This effected me as I meet my husband through work. It was OK until they changed how they worked. I used to take calls and do admin. But they then decided to have a separate team for admin and at the same time split us up (no one had said a word before as even though policy it often was not acted on). This meant I could no longer do admin as my husband was on that team.

 

In the end I moved from PC World to The Tech Guys (same company and even same floor) so I couldn't be held back from doing things which I had been trained to do.

 

Is there something on their contracts about having a relationship with another employee?

 

The sister one is different. You can choose who you date but not who you are related to.

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I suggest you (collectively) submit a formal grievance.

Their policy appears to be entirely without merit and likely to erode the essential trust and confidence in the employer.

Edited by Hairyloon

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I suggest you recommend they contact their trade union rep who will be trained in matters such as this.

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