EAT The employer requested a report as to contracting out their security arrangements in late 1996. The recommendation to contract out came in January 1997. After enquiries in May, a second report repeated the recommendation. Managers were consulted in August and a contract was offered in October, for the change at Christmas, The employer told the union. Meetings took place but each accepted that the question of redundancies was already decided. 29 security staff were made redundant, and their complaint under section 99 EPA was upheld by an Industrial Tribunal. They said the consultation should have commenced in May.
Held: The employer’s appeal failed. Knox J said: ‘We were also pressed on behalf of the employees with the argument that the consultations which the section requires must be meaningful: compare E. Green and Son (Castings) Ltd v Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs [1984] ICR 352, 359H and Transport and General Workers’ Union v Ledbury Preserves (1928) Ltd [1985] IRLR 412, and that the quality of the consultation formed a significant factor in leading to the industrial tribunal’s decision that Leyland were in breach of section 99 as well as the timing of the consultation. On the other hand for Leyland it was submitted that although the consultation has to be genuine it does not follow as a matter of law that an employer who embarks on consultation believing that he has an unanswerable case has failed in his statutory obligation to consult. In principle we accept this latter submission but it does not, in our judgment, go to the point which we have to decide which is whether the industrial tribunal erred in law in reaching the decision that Leyland were in breach of section 99.
In our view, they asked themselves the right question that is to say ‘when did Leyland propose to dismiss the security staff as redundant?’ Although they did in our view make two discernible errors in the course of their decision, neither of them affects the validity of the answer which they gave to that question.’
Those errors were, first a finding of fact, found by the EAT to be immaterial, which was unsupported by any evidence; the second was a self-direction by the tribunal that it was not open to them to construe section 99 in line with EC Directive 75/129/ECC.
Knox J said: ‘We are not persuaded that the Directive requires any construction to be adopted of the words of section 99(1) ‘an employer proposing to dismiss as redundant an employee’ which would require a later stage in the employer’s decision-making process to be identified than section 99 (1) in the context of the Act of 1975 alone would require. Whether or not an earlier stage would be appropriate does not arise for decision.’
Judges:
Knox J
Citations:
[1991] ICR 696
Statutes:
Employment Protection Act 1975 99, EC Directive 75/129/ECC
Cited by:
Cited – MSF v Refuge Assurance Plc, United Friendly Insurance EAT 15-Feb-2002
EAT The EAT considered the employer’s duties to consult on making redundancies. The ET had found that company had satisfied the requirements. The Union argued that the duty to consult arose as soon as . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment, European
Updated: 15 May 2022; Ref: scu.421397