David Malamatenios is a partner and Colin Makin, Linda Quinn, Krishna Santra and Sandra Martins are associates at Colman Coyle Solicitors. They round up the latest rulings.
This employment tribunal case arose from a situation in which the employer felt that it had no option but to dismiss a foreign worker who lost her right to work in the UK.
This private security contractor, which needed most employees by law to hold a security licence, fairly dismissed an employee who did not have the required documentation.
This week's case of the week, provided by DLA Piper, covers whether or not the "Acas code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures" applied in a dismissal for a breakdown in trust and confidence.
This employer was told by the police that a non-negotiable condition of retaining the licence for its nightclub business, without which it would have to close, was the removal of an employee who had allegedly poorly handled incidents of violent crime in the nightclub.
Georgina Kyriacou and David Malamatenios are partners and Sandra Martins, Colin Makin and Krishna Santra are associates at Colman Coyle Solicitors. They round up the latest rulings.
In this case, the employer failed to meet its legal obligations to an employee who was a reservist returning from deployment in Afghanistan. The case was complicated by the fact that it was a client's refusal to have the employee back on site that resulted in his dismissal.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that, where an employee is dismissed primarily because of a breakdown in trust and confidence rather than conduct, the employer's contractual disciplinary procedures will not apply.
In Klusova v London Borough of Hounslow [2007] EWCA Civ 1127, the Court of Appeal upheld a finding of unfair dismissal in the case of an employee who was dismissed on the grounds that she was no longer entitled to work in the UK. There was evidence to support the tribunal's finding that the employee was, in fact, legally entitled to work in the UK at the time of her dismissal. While the employer's mistaken belief about her immigration status was capable of amounting to "some other substantial reason" for dismissal, the fact that the employer had failed to follow the statutory dismissal procedure rendered the dismissal automatically unfair.