Switching employer for same customer

[chavvy]

I am contractor A, I work for consultancy B or have placed me in company C. Consultancy X also place people in company C. By the way I am agency free

For valid reasons I am considering going contracting for consultancy X, I will not spend most of my time at company C but I will be working 100% on the company C account. It won't be the same job, but it will be in the same space.

My current contract with B states that I can't go and work for either the client or the clients client. What it doesn't state is that I can't work for the clients supplier.

I personally think that I am legally entitled to work for X, but I wondered if anyone has been in this situation before and if there were any issues?

[northernladuk]

This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. Saying that brain is on wind down for the weekend but still, could you have made it any more complicated?

I work for consultancy B or have placed me in company C

I presume you have typed this wrong which kinda screws the whole chain up.

You say you are agency free but you work for a consultancy that puts you on a client, not much different. In a nutshell you are trying to switch providors to do work for the client. We need to see the exact wording of you contract but generally you cannot switch agents to go work for the same client, wording of the contract appart there will be such a tulipstorm it could jeapordise both positions. The fact that your client is mentioned in the handcuff clause and your client is mentioned in your new contract puts you in very hot water. It will come down to a legal argument I expect. I would get legal advice in this instance as it may be too close for us to call.

I would expect though if there is a grey area the spirit of the clause will be upheld which is, I believe, that your current agency does not lose revenue to another company placing you at the same place. i.e. protection against you jumping ship.

[jmo21]

Yeah, WNLUKS

Assuming you meant "who" instead of "or", I'd be pretty surprised if your contract lets you still end up working for the end client, but I could be wrong.

The situation seems exactly the same as what you would expect be blocked if there was no consultancy and you were jumping from one agent to the other, and would be easily blocked be any typical contract we work under.

[chavvy]

My original post stands. I think the confusion comes from the term consultancy. A consultancy (in my terminology) is very differently from an agency. Axon or Accenture are examples of consultancy.

So in my example B could be Axon. When a customer of Axon (e.g. NPower) takes on-board consultants they will be treated very different from agency staff, they are part of team, they will be expected to draw on resources from the parent company and the biggest difference is they will cost twice as much.

So taking my example I contract for Axon, I work at NPower and I want to go and contract for Accenture. Accenture are also on the NPower account, if I work for Accenture I will find myself in the same space as I was before but not in the same job, but my immediate NPower colleagues would be the same.

The wording of the contract states something along the lines of (I don't have access to the contract at the moment but remember the key points)

a) you cannot work for the client
b) you cannot work for the clients customer.

My point is that by working for Accenture I am neither working for the client or the clients customer directly. I agree that indirectly I am and I agree that this is a bit of a legal mine field. Just wondering if anyone had come across this before.

[manclarky]

My original post stands

I think both previous posters had a problem with the sentence:

I work for consultancy B or have placed me in company C

They were also letting you know the complexity of what you're trying to do, which is quite difficult without seeing the actual contract.

[jmo21]

The wording of the contract states something along the lines of (I don't have access to the contract at the moment but remember the key points)

a) you cannot work for the client
b) you cannot work for the clients customer.

My point is that by working for Accenture I am neither working for the client or the clients customer directly. I agree that indirectly I am and I agree that this is a bit of a legal mine field. Just wondering if anyone had come across this before.

So 2 posts, and you still don't have the wording for us.

OUR point is that it is very common to have a clause that says something about "you cannot work for the client or the client's client either directly or indirectly".

The "indirectly" part would cover your circumstance.

You may be lucky, it may not say that, but since you still cannot tell us exactly what it says, your original point does not still stand.

Also, I agree consultancy does not equal agency, but again in most of our cases, and in my experience, there really won't be much difference.