Originally Posted by
drfaust
Well the question isn’t really about me and I am most definitely not jumping to sign away anything. It was a genuine question: if they give everyone notice, and then offer COS18, what exactly is it we could do about it? I’m also talking about HKG here because I don’t know how anything works at the bases.
If the alternative to signing is taking redundancy they could well still follow the LIFO principle in the contracts. The person on the list before you that signs disappears from that list, if they don’t sign they also disappear from the list because of being made redundant, so when your number is up they are not firing out of seniority. That’s what I meant and it’s a genuine question.
That would mean that someone junior would voluntarily take redundancy so that someone senior could remain on their contract as opposed to signing COS18 and remaining employed. It is a highly undesirable scenario, but it seems it would be the only legal way to circumvent redundancies outside of seniority.
Is there anything that can actually prevent this from happening?
Problem would be the first time they involuntarily made someone redundant of greater seniority while retaining someone of lesser they've violated the contract. Could they attempt to terminate ALL contracts in HKG ? Meh..... what they are doing is in practice trying to evade a legitimate and binding contract and that'd be up to the courts in HKG.
Now one thing that might be able to help is if by doing things that way in HKG it adversely affected someone on a base in some way (at least in a forum where the contract is actionable under law). And they could show that the way HKG was doing things violated the redundancy provision of their CA/EA/CBA and had harmed them with a future contract or upgrade opportunity in some way (for example if HKG terminated the contract in HKG, forced everyone onto POS18 or whatever, then shut the base and forced returnees onto POS18 you could certainly demonstrate that the entire shebang was deliberately done to evade the redundancy provisions of the original EA/CA/CBA on the base and take it for legal action in the based country).
Considering the costs if I were the company I'd make some sort of very attractive voluntary option to stay out of the quagmire. And/Or follow the contract exactly as written and furlough (with stipulated pay protection) as it's delineated in reverse seniority order. But I ain't them.