Advice: Issue with Permanent Employment contract on UK RC

[Druidpromo]

Not sure if this is the right place to post.

I secured a job with a utility company using my CoA while applying for my UK RC (Surinder Singh). The conditions were that they would hire me on a contract basis for 6 months and would give me a permanent contract when I received my RC.

I provided my RC to them as soon as I received it and a month later despite saying they would finalise my permanent contract they are now saying because my RC expires in 2024 I am legally not entitled to a permanent job but they can still offer me a contract for two years.

Anybody have an idea if immigration law prohibits one from getting a permanent job or prohibits companies from offering a permanent position. I would have thought with my UK RC I had a right to a permanent job?

Any guidance will be greatly appreciated.

[CR001]

This is an employment law issue and not an immigration rule etc issue.

Many migrants only get fixed term contracts or a perm contract with an end date and stating subject to further visas etc.

[kamoe]

My two cents from my completely amateur point of view:

Anybody have an idea if immigration law prohibits one from getting a permanent job or prohibits companies from offering a permanent position.

In over 7 years in the UK, I have mostly been offered permanent roles, while I have held time-restricted visas or permits. This involved one multinational company hiring a specialized immigration agency to manage my sponsored application (for my time-based Tier 2 visa, which I had before I had my RC). No one ever raised the fact that my contract was permanent as a legal issue.

I would have thought with my UK RC I had a right to a permanent job?

I believe the issue in your case is not if there is a hypothetical law prohibiting companies from offering a permanent position to people with time-restricted permits or visas. The issue is that there is probably no law forcing companies to offer permanent positions, to anyone, in general terms.

I know of a number of world-renown organizations in the UK which routinely issue one-year contracts to their employees (be their nationality UK, EU, or international), at all levels, and renew their contracts every year. I suppose this can happen for a number of reasons, but probably mainly because they depend on funds that are released every year, or on a project basis.

But for whatever reason, at the end of the day, the company chooses who they hire and for how long, and they make the call of what is reasonable for the company.

In your case, the company seems wary that there is a time limit in the document you have produced, and they seem to have decided to be on the safe side and avoid being in a position where, 5 years down the road, your permit expires and you cannot renew it, for whatever reason. They do not want to be liable in any way or to have to prematurely terminate your contract, with all the potential legal implications (even if that is unlikely to happen because you will very likely renew your RC, etc). I would believe they have a right to decide to proceed in this way, and this does not mean that they will not, in good faith, be happy to renew your contract and make it a permanent one, when you can produce a document that is not bound to time constraints.

In all fairness, the average duration of employment at a given company is about 3 years, so a 2-year contract is not, objectively, a bad offer. It is also a reason why, I think, none of my employers ever seemed to have had any issues with my 3-year and 5-year visas and permits.