Dismissal; what counts as notice; redundancy payment. To terminate a contract of employment by notice the employer must specify when the termination is to take effect, or at least make the date ascertainable. A warning that employment would come to an end is not notice of dismissal: an employee who leaves in response to such a warning terminates the contract himself, is not dismissed, and so has no claim to a redundancy payment.
Redundancy; fairness; laid down the 'Compair Maxam' guidelines: warning, consultation, criteria, alternative work.
Cited by
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Dismissal; termination by mutual agreement; early retirement. 'Dismissal' under s.83(2)(a) EPCA 1978 (now s.136(1)(a) ERA 1996) means the unilateral termination of the contract by the employer, with or without the employee's consent; it does not include termination by mutual agreement. Employees who applied for and accepted early retirement under a scheme in which the employer retained the final decision had their contracts ended by mutual agreement, not by dismissal. The court looks at the substance rather than the form of the dealings between the parties, and whether there was a dismissal on agreed facts is a question of law.
Cited by
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Unfair dismissal; compensation; if a dismissal is procedurally unfair but the employee would have been dismissed anyway, compensation is reduced. [Summary checked against a later judgment that cites it, not the judgment itself.]
Cited by
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Redundancy; the three-stage test: (1) was the employee dismissed? (2) had the requirements of the business for employees to carry out work of a particular kind ceased or diminished? (3) was the dismissal caused by that state of affairs?
Redundancy; the classic definition: a redundancy situation exists if the requirements of the business for employees to carry out work of a particular kind have ceased or diminished.
Unfair dismissal; redundancy; appointment to new roles after a reorganisation. The Williams v Compair Maxam factors are standards of behaviour, not principles of law, and address selection for redundancy from an existing pool. Where a reorganisation creates new and different roles, the employer's decision is necessarily forward-looking, centred on the individual's ability to perform the new role, and is likely to involve something more like an interview than a Williams-type selection. The tribunal had not erred in dismissing the claim.
Cited by
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Redundancy; unfair dismissal; consultation; Polkey. The tribunal found a redundancy dismissal with no consultation, dismissed the unfair dismissal claim and yet awarded compensation. Failure to consult will often render a dismissal unfair, and a tribunal finding such a dismissal fair would be expected to say why [6]. On the tribunal's findings the only available conclusion was unfair dismissal: Lady Poole substituted that finding without remitting [9], [26]. The compensatory award of two weeks' pay stood. Consultation at a formative stage might affect whether a person is made redundant, but it was for the tribunal to find what would have happened in this case, and its findings were adequate [18]-[19].
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.
Redundancy; collective consultation; s.188 TULRCA 1992; meaning of proposing to dismiss; pool and individual consultation. The tribunal misread UQ v Marclean as requiring it to look backwards and forwards and aggregate dismissals: Marclean concerns the meaning of collective redundancies in Article 1 of the Directive, not when an employer is contemplating them, and s.188 asks what the employer was proposing for the future [55], [60], [64]. Later dismissals may still support an inference of an earlier proposal [61]. The duty is owed only in respect of employees with a contract with the respondent: a de facto employer of group staff is not enough [74], [76]. No single unified proposal is required: separate departmental decisions can amount to the employer proposing [85]. The findings of unfair dismissal, for failing to consider a pool of two and for inadequate consultation, stood [106], [110]-[111]. The s.188 issues and the protected period were remitted to the same tribunal [112]-[113], [115].
Cites
References found in the judgments’ text, with the number of paragraphs in which each case is mentioned. Not a classification: how a case was treated is recorded under Later history.