Can my ex employers impose conditions on me after retirement?.

[aydat]

I gave 1 of my workmates a reference 6 months after my retirement.
I was senior to him but not much.
The letter I received requesting the reference stated that anything I say would be kept confidential between the company requesting the reference and myself.
At the time of leaving there were no regulations about giving references as long as they were not written on company headed paper.
My ex employers have now written to me stating that a rule was introduced 3 months after I retired saying no employee or ex employee is to give a reference on another empoyee or contractor without the permission of Human Resources.
The letter I received from my old employers stated that I had contravened regulations by giving this reference and they have enclosed a copy of the letter they claim to have sent to me detailing this new regulation and they said my pension could be stopped if I contravene any regulations again.

1) I never received this letter and I have asked for the recorded delivery slip. They have said it was sent by ordinary post and they are not obliged to use recorded delivery.
I will not issue any more references now but what bothers me is my ex employers could claim they have sent anything to me in future if this is valid and stop my pension if I do not comply.

2) I would have thought my ex employers should have not been told about the reference I issued. They do not agree with what I wrote but it was on my own paper and not company headed paper. Have I got any recourse to the new employers in relation to this?.

3) Can ex employers impose conditions on you anyway?.

[Edger]

Hi Aydat

I am no expert on this but have you got contact details for other ex employees to see if they received this letter?. Even this would not prove anything. If they have your letter could have been lost.

Going by logic I would have thought this was not valid.
In theory if this was valid an ex employer could introduce a rule saying you are not to work for the employer you work for now 20 years after you left for example.

If you were in a union I would contact them or the Citizens Advice Bureau.

John

[snags]

''a rule was introduced 3 months after I retired''

How can you have 'contravened a regulations that wasn't in place at the time you were employed?

[snags]

^ 'contravened a regulation'

[ojread2]

If the reference is confidential, how did your former employer discover you had given a reference to anyone who works there now?

It seems ludicrous to me that someone you no longer work for can impose such restrictions but for the safety of your pension, for now I would advise you do as you have suggested until you find out otherwise

tonywiltshire posts here a lot and seems to have a great knowledge on this type of subject sp hopefully he will be along to help

[buildersmate]

Any reference you gave regarding a work colleague should have made it clear that you were no longer employed by the company, and that you were providing a personal reference and not an employer reference (you probably did this anyway).

I agree that your former employer is being somewhat pig-headed about this, in respect of the accusation that they sent you a letter making the new policy clear. Are we (and you) to assume that they wrote to all retirees and ex-employees telling them about this 'policy'? - pull the other one.

I would just write to state that you did not receive the letter and therefore you could not have known that the policy was in place. However you are happy to comply with the policy now that you know it exists.

There are more important things in your retirement to have the worry of this.

[Edger]

Hi ojread2

I also find it ludicrous that the employer has sent out letters to employees / ex employees about a change of regulations and not wanted to get proof the letters had been received.
They could have enclosed a reply paid envelope and something for the employee to sign to acknowledge receipt.
It would have cost money however as they would have had to monitored the replies as well as the post costs.
I can remember the company I worked for did this in relation to ex employees pensions. Really this was to bring regulations up to the times for example if an ex employee / employee had given an e mail address this could be used to give notice.
At the time I did think this could cause problems.
If an pensioner had to go into care with dementia for example would he be able to use e mail?.

John

[Edger]

Sorry Buildersmate

When my company sent out the notices to the pensioners we did not ask for any acknowledgement.
We put a notice on 3 subsequent pension statements asking them to contact the company if they had not received this letter.
We did not do any more as we thought there would be no real consequences for the employee or the company had the letters not been received.
I did sugest these letters were sent in the same envelopes as the pension statements. I was told this was a good sugestion but it would have not been cost effective ( people's time etc).

John

[joko]

as the reference was about the employees time spent and their company i can undertsand why they would want to have some control over that.
just because you used plain paper does not remove the link to them.
just because it has your name on it is still effectively a reference from the company.

if i worked at, say, boots, and an ex employee gave me a reference - it would be a reference from boots - as that what the referece is about - me at boots.

if i found out that a nightmare employee of mine had been given a glowing refernce from another employee of mine - in the name of the work in my department - id be furious!

that you have retired is irrelevant - unless the reference was purely a personal one, about the employee as a friend...but it isnt.

however i agree they are being a bit over the top about it.... they have probably heard about this and are backtracking a bit

[Edger]

Hi Joko

I can understand what you are saying.
I do however think the issue here is there was no regulation about references when aydat retired and as far as he was aware there was no regulation at the time he wrote the reference.
Probably another issue similar to this came up a few months ago and that is why the letters were sent to all of the employees.
Where I think it is wrong no checks have been made to ensure these letters were received.
If say 5000 letters were issued the odd one will go astray. Probably 4,990 of the employees would never give a reference on another employee so this is real bad luck.
Also you said ''if i found out that a nightmare employee of mine had been given a glowing refernce from another employee of mine - in the name of the work in my department - id be furious!''.
Nightmare in whose opinion. There is no such thing as an incorrect opinion.
Another thing happened to me.
I changed companies and my manager got a job application from a member of staff at my previous company.
He asked me about that employee but in all truth we worked on opposite sides of an office of 120 employees so I did not really know him.

John

[joko]

not sure of the point you are making there regarding the nightmare employee - my point is that - in MY opinion they were a nightmare so i would not want people to think that their time in MY dept had been great when in my opinion they were terrible - and as the boss that is my choice to make.

employees should not really give references to other employees on behalf of the company - and if the ref is about their time at the company then that is what they are doing - and it is not their place to do that.

[themas]

I would question whether the ex-employer has the right to stop your pension. The pension scheme is presumably run by trustees, who are separate from the employer (although the same people might be involved). The trustees have to follow the terms of the trust deed which governs the pension scheme, so - unless there is something in the deed which covers this sort of issue - they would not have the power to stop your pension.

I'm not suggesting you raise this now - just bear it in mind for the future.

[Edger]

Hi Joko

I see what you are saying but if the company has no regulation regarding the issue of references by employees you cannot suddenly say an employee has done something wrong.
I have noted in Aydat's thread it appears employees can issue references on other employees or contractors with permission of the Human Resources department.
What would be interesting is would the human resources department want to see any references written by employees and may not allow them to go out if the boss did not agree with what the employee said.
It could also cause problems if the employee's views did not agree with those of the boss and the boss tries to amend the reference and the employee then says I can not allow that reference to go out in my name as in my opinion it is not true.

John

[Edger]

Hi themas

I know in my pension scheme the only way the employer could stop the pension was if it was found the employee had committed fraud against the company.
I did hear of a case where this happened in another company and the employees pension was stopped and the employee was prosecuted.
When the case got to court it was thrown out due to insufficient evidence.
I do not know what happened to the pension in that case.

John