Automatically unfair dismissal
Cases on appeal provides news on key case law developments that are expected.
We look at five recent cases in which employers have been found to have discriminated against employees who were pregnant or on maternity leave.
In Rodgers v Leeds Laser Cutting Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld a tribunal's decision that the employee's dismissal for refusing to return to the workplace because of concerns about the pandemic was not automatically unfair for a health and safety reason.
We look at four employment tribunal cases in which the claimants successfully argued that they were discriminated against during difficult pregnancies and pregnancy loss.
In Slade and another v Biggs and others, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the tribunal had been entitled to apply the 25% Acas uplift to the awards for aggravated damages and injury to feelings, given its findings of serious pregnancy discrimination.
We round up four recent employment tribunal decisions where employers' actions have resulted in pregnancy and maternity discrimination claims and provide practical tips on how to reduce the risks of similar claims.
In Henderson v AccountsNet Ltd, the employment tribunal awarded £13,081 to a trainee accountant who was found to have been unfairly dismissed after she left the office to collect her ill child from school.
With coronavirus-related employment tribunal rulings now appearing regularly, we examine four early examples of first-instance decisions where an employer dismissed an employee who refused, or was reluctant, to attend work because of health and safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Rawal v Royal Mail Group Ltd ET, an employment tribunal held that the principal reason for the employee's dismissal was his trade union activities, not because he had urinated in a public place.
In Royal Mail Group Ltd v Jhuti, the Supreme Court held that, where a dismissal for making protected disclosures is hidden behind an invented reason that is adopted by the decision-maker, the reason for the dismissal is the hidden reason rather than the invented one.
Employment law cases: HR and legal information and guidance relating to automatically unfair dismissal.