MJ Quinns have escalated the issue of how fuel costs are claimed back by employees and the removal of fuel cards by now threatening to dismiss and re-engage staff on new contracts in a growing dispute over removal of fuel cards and changing the process by which people can claim fuel costs. Instead of claiming back fuel costs or using Fuel Cards, MJ Quinns are proposing that they pay fuel costs at the Inland Revenue Business Rate of 14p a mile for defined routes to workplaces. This could ignore road diversions etc and we believe may seriously impact our members and leave them paying for the fuel they use driving on MJ Quinns jobs.
Following previous advice to reject the proposals and ask a series of questions on how the MJ Quinns proposal will work, the company have now taken the serious step to threaten to dismiss the workforce and re-employ them on new contracts. They are also looking for staff representatives to ‘discuss’ these proposals and will not negotiate with the RMT.
To that end we are advising our members to insist that the RMT are allowed to represent them and we are looking to start the formal recognition process with immediate effect
We have also advised that we will seek a legal opinion if necessary as to whether this would amount to Unfair Dismissal if members refused to accept the varied new employment contracts.
For more details on contracts check
http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/8/6/Varying-a-contract-of-employment-accessible-version.pdf