EAT Victimisation Discrimination: Protected Disclosure
One of the Claimant’s claims that he had made protected disclosures – and been subject to detriment and an automatically unfair dismissal as a result – was based on a written complaint that he and three other lorry drivers at a haulage depot had made. It was a complaint that the distribution of overtime to drivers at that depot was being dealt with unfairly and in breach of their contracts of employment (for a variety of reasons and with a range of effects).
At a Preliminary Hearing, the Regional Employment Judge struck-out that particular claim because such a complaint, concerning only a group of workers with an identical grievance about particular terms of their contracts, could not meet the ‘public interest’ test in the amended Employment Rights Act 1996 section 43B(1).
Appeal allowed. The Regional Employment Judge’s Order had been made before the judgment in Chesterton [2015] IRLR 614 EAT and was inconsistent with it. The Employment Appeal Tribunal had decided that prima facie it was at least possible for a matter to be ‘in the public interest’ even if it was concerned only with a contractual dispute between a group of employees and their employer. Although that decision was subject of an appeal to the Court of Appeal (listed for October 2016) it should meanwhile be followed and claims should meanwhile be tried to determine whether, in fact, in any particular case, the Claimant had had a reasonable belief that the matter had been raised by him ‘in the public interest’.
Rec Luba QC
[2015] UKEAT 0163 – 15 – 2708
Bailii
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 05 January 2022; Ref: scu.553729
