Automatically unfair dismissal
An employment tribunal has struck out whistleblowing claims brought by an individual who argued that he made a protected disclosure when he complained that his line manager had been rude to a colleague. The claimant did not reasonably believe that he was making the disclosure "in the public interest".
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has held that allegations about accounting malpractices that affected the bonuses and commission of 100 senior managers were made in the reasonable belief that they were in the public interest.
In DLA Piper's latest case report, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that a police officer who made protected disclosures was dismissed after taking matters into his own hands and becoming difficult to manage because he was not satisfied with the action taken following the concerns that he had raised, and that he was not dismissed for blowing the whistle.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal agreed with an employment tribunal that emails sent by the claimant taken together were capable of amounting to qualifying disclosures, even though the emails were sent to different individuals in different departments.
In this case, a charity fairly dismissed two whistleblowing employees for the manner in which they had raised their concerns.
This week's case of the week, provided by DLA Piper, concerns a school assistant who claimed that she was dismissed for whistleblowing after she went to the press over her treatment for telling parents that their child had been bullied.
In The Manchester College v Hazel and another EAT/0642/11 & EAT/0136/12, the EAT upheld a ruling by the employment tribunal that dismissals as a result of post-TUPE-transfer harmonisation were automatically unfair because they did not constitute an ETO reason "entailing changes in the workforce".
Carly Mather, Lydia Newman and Amy Ross-Sercombe are associates and Amanda Steadman is a professional support lawyer at Addleshaw Goddard LLP. They round up the latest rulings.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that the tribunal was correct to find that the respondent did not have an economic, technical or organisational (ETO) defence in respect of the two claimants, who were dismissed as a result of harmonisation following a post-TUPE transfer redundancy process.
In this case, the employment tribunal found that a worker, who had refused to work more than 48 hours per week, was automatically unfairly dismissed by his employer.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to automatically unfair dismissal.