The Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996

Power to adapt provisions in case of collective agreement

226.—(1) This Article applies where there is in force a collective agreement which establishes—

(a) arrangements for providing alternative employment for employees to whom the agreement relates if they are dismissed as redundant by an employer to whom it relates, or

(b) arrangements for the dismissal of employees as redundant.

(2) On the application of all the parties to the agreement the Department may, if it is satisfied having regard to the provisions of the agreement that the arrangements are on the whole at least as favourable to those employees as the foregoing provisions of this Part, by order adapt, modify or exclude any of those provisions both in their application to all or any of those employees and in their application to any other employees of any such employer.

(3) The Department shall not make such an order unless the agreement—

(a) provides for procedures to be followed (whether by arbitration or otherwise) in cases where an employee to whom the agreement relates claims that any employer or other person to whom it relates has not complied with the provisions of the agreement, and

(b) provides that those procedures include a right to arbitration or adjudication by an independent referee or body in cases where (by reason of an equality of votes or otherwise) a decision cannot otherwise be reached,

or indicates that any such employee may present a complaint to an industrial tribunal that any such employer or other person has not complied with those provisions.

(4) An order under this Article may confer on an industrial tribunal to which a complaint is presented as mentioned in paragraph (3) such powers and duties as the Department considers appropriate.

(5) An order under this Article may be varied or revoked by a subsequent order thereunder either in pursuance of an application made by all or any of the parties to the agreement in question or without any such application.