Four employees said that they had been dismissed for redundancy, and now appealed against rejection of their claims.
Held: The court set out the obligations on an employer in a redundancy situation, including the need to look for alternatives to dismissal: ‘there are only two relevant principles of law arising from that subsection. First, that it is not the function of the Industrial Tribunal to decide whether they would have thought it fairer to act in some other way: the question is whether the dismissal lay within the range of conduct which a reasonable employer could have adopted. The second point of law, particularly relevant in the field of dismissal for redundancy, is that the tribunal must be satisfied that it was reasonable to dismiss each of the applicants on the ground of redundancy. It is not enough to show simply that it was reasonable to dismiss an employee; it must be shown that the employer acted reasonably in treating redundancy ‘as a sufficient reason for dismissing the employee’, i.e. the employee complaining of dismissal. Therefore, if the circumstances of the employer make it inevitable that some employee must be dismissed, it is still necessary to consider the means whereby the applicant was selected to be the employee to be dismissed and the reasonableness of the steps taken by the employer to choose the applicant, rather than some other employee, for dismissal.’
Browne-Wilkinson J
[1982] ICR 156, [1982] UKEAT 372 – 81 – 2201, [1982] IRLR 83
Bailii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – L T I Ltd v A R Radford EAT 19-Jul-2000
The employee had been selected for redundancy. He alleged that a collective agreement was incorporated into his contract of employment, which would put the employer’s methods of selection of employees for redundancy a breach of contract. The . .
Cited – Transport and General Workers Union v Safeway Stores Ltd EAT 23-Mar-2007
EAT Practice and Procedure – Amendment
Safeway closed a depot, leading to a large number of redundancies. The Union alleged that consultation was inadequate. Proceedings were initially commenced claiming only . .
Cited – Rolls Royce Motor Cars Ltd v Price and others EAT 2-Feb-1993
The company appealed against findings of unfair dismissal of the claimants, saying that they had been made redundant. The claimants said that the company had broken the agreed procedure, and that the dismissals were automatically unfair.
Held: . .
Cited – British Aerospace plc v Green and Others CA 18-Apr-1995
The employer was to make 530 members of its staff redundant. Each staff member was assessed and scored. The claimants said that the method of selection was unfair, and sought disclosure of the scores of all employees.
Held: It was wrong to . .
Cited – Polkey v A E Dayton Services Limited HL 19-Nov-1987
Mr Polkey was employed as a driver. The company decided to replace four van drivers with two van salesmen and a representative. Mr Polkey and two other van drivers were made redundant. Without warning, he was called in and informed that he had been . .
Cited – Mitchells of Lancaster (Brewers) Ltd v Tattersall EAT 29-May-2012
mitchells_tattersallEAT2012
EAT JURISDICTIONAL POINTS – Worker, employee or neither
UNFAIR DISMISSAL
Reasonableness of dismissal
Polkey deduction
REDUNDANCY – Fairness
The Respondent had made the applicant, who was . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Leading Case
Updated: 11 November 2021; Ref: scu.181799