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0 pointsrahoulb2y ago0 comments

I don't know about elsewhere, but under UK law this would be illegal - precisely to stop this sort of thing happening.

The new company has to offer employees a "transfer of previous employment" - so even though you're working for someone else, your history at the previous company is moved over with you. So if they wanted to get rid of you, they would then have to go through a redundancy process - which involves explaining why they're letting you go, offering you alternatives and giving you a payout based on your length of service.

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jacobr12y ago

But in this case apparently they didn't actually sell the company, so no employees moved. The employees were still employed at Epic, until laid off by Epic. So presuming there was a violation of labor law (in the US or hypothetically in the UK) wouldn't all liability rest with Epic? Unless the argument is that it really _was_ a sale of the company, which probably rests on very technical arguments specific to the jurisdiction.

WorldMaker2y ago

> wouldn't all liability rest with Epic?

I think how it gets prosecuted also depends on if there is a way to prove collusion between the two companies in this. It is absolutely fishy that Epic laid everyone off just before the sale/transfer concluded to Songtradr and both companies can currently pretend they did nothing wrong and hurting the union was an accident of bad timing and Songtradr especially looking "clean" hiring back in "waves" based on BS metrics and "goodwill" since it could have just not offered jobs back to people already laid off by the previous owner. It can be hard not to imagine that there wasn't some "golf course handshake" on the whole thing, but proving that existed may be tough to do, especially if the collusion was literal golf course handshakes with no paper trail.

plussed_reader2y ago

This is just the Prop 13 workaround for business real estate in California; don't sell the property sell the LLC that owns the deed to the plot.

This should be illegal but it just sounds like good free market business.

babypuncher2y ago

In the US, we reward companies coming up with clever loopholes to screw people over. In Europe they see these tricks for exactly what they are and punish these companies anyways.

rahoulbOP2y ago

The Songtradr press release says "we have acquired Bandcamp" - which to my ears sounds like "we have taken ownership of the company registration" (in UK terms). In which case TUPE would apply, if they were Bandcamp employees. Even if Bandcamp was dissolved as a company, I suspect there would be a case for TUPE seeing as the acquisition happened so soon after the dissolution.

If they were Epic, not Bandcamp, employees then Songtradr would be within their rights to proceed as they have. But Epic would have had to go through a redundancy process (including explaining why it's happening, detailing the alternative tactics they have explored and trying to find other roles within the organisation for the affected employees).

Of course, it's all immaterial as UK law doesn't apply (and I only took a short qualification in it so I know it's fiendishly complex anyway).

EDITED to remove information I had included in the original post

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