240 employees had attended a mass meeting. The employers wrote to them saying that they had broken their contract by attending an unauthorised meeting during working hours and they had automatically terminated their employment. They claimed unfair dismissal. The industrial tribunal held that they had repudiated their contracts of contract and they had not been dismissed.
Held: The employees’ appeals succeeded. They had all been dismissed.
Judges:
Waterhouse J
Citations:
[1980] ICR 494
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Applied – Western Excavating (ECC) Ltd v Sharp CA 1978
To succeed in a claim for constructive dismissal the plaintiff must establish a breach of contract by the defendant, that the breach was sufficiently serious to have justified the claimant resigning, or at least be the last in a series of events . .
Cited – Fisher v York Trade Leco Ltd 1979
Slynn J said: ‘It seems to us that where what is being relied upon by an employer or an employee is not a resignation or a dismissal but conduct which is said to be a fundamental breach of the contract and where the parties said to have been in . .
Cited by:
Cited – Alcan Extrusions v Yates and others EAT 5-Feb-1996
The employers appealed against a decision that it had constructively dismissed the respondents by substantially changing their employment terms.
Held: The tribunal approved the chairman’s statement that ‘the applicants’ former contracts of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Updated: 07 May 2022; Ref: scu.278576
