Unfair dismissal
In George v London Borough of Brent, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that the employer's failure to comply with a contractual obligation to offer a redundant employee a trial period for a possible alternative role was likely to render the dismissal unfair.
In Hawkes v Ausin Group (UK) Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that the employer's failure to hold a meeting with a reservist employee, before making the decision to dismiss, did not make the dismissal for some other substantial reason unfair.
In East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust v Levy, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that an employee's letter of notice to her department did not amount to a resignation from the respondent's employment because the wording used was ambiguous.
In Dibble v Falzon and Falzon t/a The Anne Arms, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) found that there were fundamental flaws in a tribunal decision that a pub worker was fairly dismissed over CCTV footage of her taking money out of a bar till.
In Talon Engineering Ltd v Smith, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that an employer's refusal to postpone a disciplinary hearing for two weeks to allow the employee's union official to accompany her made her dismissal unfair.
In Patel v Folkestone Nursing Home Ltd, the Court of Appeal held that the effect of a contractual right of appeal against dismissal is that a successful appeal revives the contract and extinguishes the original dismissal.
In Bluebird Buses Ltd v Borowicki, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) upheld an employment tribunal's findings of unfair and wrongful dismissal in relation to a bus driver whose bus became stranded after he drove it into a patch of flooded road.
In Afzal v East London Pizza Ltd t/a Dominos Pizza, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that an employee who was dismissed when he failed to produce evidence of his continuing right to work in the UK should have had the right to appeal.
In Morris v Metrolink RATP DEV Ltd, the Court of Appeal held that a trade union representative who retained confidential information related to a restructuring exercise was unfairly dismissed.
Consultant editor Darren Newman looks at a recent case in which the Court of Appeal had to consider if, in sharing information from a manager's desk diary, a trade union rep had acted outside the scope of trade union activities for the purposes of the automatically unfair dismissal protection afforded by s.152 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.
HR and legal information and guidance relating to unfair dismissal.