Redundancy

New and updated

• Date:

  15 June 1996

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Implied terms: No implied contractual right to enhanced redundancy pay

  In Quinn and others v Calder Industrial Materials Ltd the EAT upholds an industrial tribunal's ruling that the employer was not in breach of contract by failing to make enhanced redundancy payments to redundant employees.

• Date:

  15 April 1996

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy consultation: Definition of "establishment" under Collective Redundancies Directive

  An "establishment" for the purposes of the EC Collective Redundancies Directive means the unit to which the workers made redundant are assigned to carry out their duties, rules the ECJ in Rockfon A/S v Specialarbejderforbundet i Danmark.

• Date:

  1 July 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Discovery of assessment forms must relate to issues raised

  In British Aerospace plc v Green, the Court of Appeal considers the guiding principles for ordering discovery of marked assessment forms in cases where redundant employees claim that they were unfairly selected.

• Date:

  1 March 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Identified for redundancy because of IVF absence

  A woman whose absence resulting from IVF treatment was treated as part of her sickness record for redundancy purposes was unlawfully discriminated against on the grounds of sex, rules an Ashford industrial tribunal (Chair: G W Davies) in Robinson v London Borough of Greenwich.

• Date:

  1 March 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Minorities 'inferior to whites'

  It is a foreseeable consequence of discriminatory treatment that an employee will become upset and demotivated, holds a Birmingham industrial tribunal (Chair: A J McCarry) in Bains v Amber Leisure Ltd, finding that the dismissal of an ethnic minority employee for redundancy was unlawful discrimination even though he had requested it.

• Date:

  1 February 1995

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Redundancy: Relocation clause defeats redundancy claim

  An employee who agreed to relocate but later decided not to move was not dismissed by reason of redundancy, but rather because of his intention not to comply with the relocation clause in his contract, holds the EAT in Richardson and another v Applied Imaging International Ltd.

• Date:

  1 December 1994

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Duffy v Yeomans & Partners Ltd

  In Duffy v Yeomans & Partners Ltd [1994] IRLR 642 CA, the Court of Appeal held that the Industrial Tribunal had not erred in holding that the employers' failure to consult the appellant employee before dismissing him on grounds of redundancy did not render the dismissal unfair in circumstances in which, on the facts known to the employers at the time the employee was dismissed, consultation would have served no useful purpose, even though the employers had not made a deliberate decision not to consult.

• Date:

  1 November 1994

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Reasonableness: Employer need not actively consider consultation

  In Polkey v AE Dayton Services Ltd, the House of Lords ruled that a redundancy dismissal will usually be unfair if the employee was not warned or consulted prior to dismissal. But the Lords said there may be exceptions to this rule where the employer, at the time of dismissal, could reasonably take the view that consultation or warnings would be useless.

• Date:

  1 March 1993

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Contracts of employment: Employer's attempt to withdraw enhanced redundancy scheme fails

  An employer had no right to withdraw unilaterally its employees' contractual entitlement to enhanced redundancy payments, holds the High Court in Lee and others v GEC Plessey Telecommunications.

• Date:

  15 February 1993

  Type:

  Employment law cases

  Judicial review: Pit closures without use of review procedure were unlawful

  British Coal had a statutory obligation to use a review procedure agreed with the trade unions in relation to proposed pit closures, holds the High Court in R v British Coal Corporation and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry ex parte Vardy and others.