Robinson v British Island Airways Ltd: EAT 1978

The claimant was a flight operations manager answerable to a general manager, operations and traffic. The employer re-organised abolishing both posts to one job of operations manager, with different tasks, new responsibilities and enhanced status for the occupant. Both post holders were dismissed. The employer paid appropriate redundancy pay but the employee complained he had been unfairly dismissed.
Held: The case was not a case of unfair dismissal but of redundancy. It could not be right that, if a dismissal had been caused by re-organisation, the reason could not be redundancy. Phillips J: ‘In truth a re-organisation may or may not end in redundancy; it all depends on the nature and effect of the re-organisation.’ The work of the new post was different in kind from that done by either of the two previous employees: ‘Thus in our judgment it can truly be said that the dismissal of the employee was attributable to the fact that the requirements of the business for employees to carry out work of a particular kind had ceased or diminished and that each was redundant.’

Judges:

Phillips J

Citations:

[1978] ICR 304

Cited by:

CitedShawkat v Nottingham City Hospital NHS Trust CA 21-Jun-2001
The claimant doctor had been dismissed. He said it was unfairly, and the Trust replied that he had been made redundant ‘for some other reason’ since he had nt acceted new conditions of work.
Held: The employee’s appeal failed. The EAT had . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Employment

Updated: 01 May 2022; Ref: scu.242102