The Employment Appeal Tribunal has affirmed the employment tribunal's decision that an employee who was unfairly dismissed because the employer believed his prison sentence frustrated his contract of employment was guilty of contributory conduct.
In this test case, the employment tribunal found that an NHS trust had unlawfully amended its pay progression policy to provide that staff would be denied a pay rise if their sickness absence reached a certain level.
The employer in this case fell into the trap of assuming that, as long as it waited for a while (one year in this case) after a TUPE transfer, it could detrimentally alter the contractual benefits of employees who had transferred, in a bid to harmonise its workforce's terms and conditions.
David Malamatenios and Georgina Kyriacou are partners, and Krishna Santra, Colin Makin and Sandra Martins are associates at Colman Coyle Solicitors. They round up the latest rulings.
The European Court of Justice has suggested that it may be possible for employers to justify engaging an individual for more than four years on a succession of fixed-term contracts as he or she moves around to cover work for different absent employees.