The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that the employment tribunal was wrong to find that the absence of a system of moderating two sets of redundancy scores following a TUPE transfer rendered the selection process unfair.
This case serves as a warning to employers always to calculate redundancy selection scores carefully, as mistakes can render a dismissal unfair even if they are identified only after the employee's appeal.
A 62-year-old worker who was made redundant was awarded over £27,000 for age discrimination and unfair dismissal, in a stark warning for employers that allow their redundancy selection procedure to be tainted by age bias.
This case deals with a common issue in redundancy situations: the discounting of disability-related absences when scoring against a "sickness absence" criterion.
In Rolls-Royce plc v Unite [2009] EWCA Civ 387 CA, the Court of Appeal held that a redundancy selection matrix set out in a 2003 collective agreement was not automatically rendered unlawful following the implementation of the age discrimination legislation in 2006.