Articles by ‘Gemma Ospedale’

In Ladrick Lemonious v Church Comissioners, the EAT reviewed the correct approach to assessing contributory fault and the extent to which this can reduce any award which may be made if the employee is found to have been unfairly dismissed.

In Durrani v London Borough of Ealing,  the EAT has held that a non-specific complaint of “discrimination”, meaning unfair treatment, but which is not linked to a protected characteristic, was not a protected act for the purposes of victimisation claim.

In Somerset County Council v Chambers, the EAT has held that pension contributions paid by the employer do not count as wages within the definition of section 27(1)(a) of the Employment Rights Act. This is not withstanding the fact that the definition is stated as being “any sums payable to the worker in connection with his employment”. The reason for this is that the contributions are paid to the pension provider on the employee’s behalf and not directly to the employee.

In I LAB Facilities v Metcalfe and others, the EAT has held that there is no obligation to consult employees under regulation 13 of TUPE where part of the business is subject to a transfer and those employees transfer, and the employees who do not transfer lose their jobs when the remainder of the business closes down. The non-transferring employees were held not to be “affected employees” within the meaning of regulation 13(1) of TUPE.

In UNISON v London Borough of Barnet and another the Tribunal made a protective award of 60 days pay in respect of redundant employees and awards of 40 and 50 days pay in respect of employees affected by TUPE transfers. Both were because of the employer’s failure to provide the recognised trade union with sufficient information on agency workers for the purpose of consulting over both the proposed redundancies and two separate TUPE transfers.

The introduction of Employee Shareholder status has been approved in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill which has now received Royal Assent.

BIS has issued a press release with commencement dates for some of the changes introduced by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013.

The Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal Fees Order 2013 has now been released.

Have local authorities learnt anything from the recent high profile age discrimination cases?

If an employer employs one person to effectively do the job of another and then sacks that other, is it a genuine redundancy?

In Kavanagh and others v Crystal Palace FC (2000) Limited and others, the EAT has held that a Tribunal was wrong to conclude that the dismissals of the employees by the club’s administrator before the business was sold, and which were clearly connected to the sale, were not automatically unfair because they were carried out for an ETO reason entailing changes in the workforce.

The case of Handshake Limited v Summers highlights that the “catch all” reason for dismissal of “some other substantial reason” (SOSR to employment professionals) cannot be relied upon as a fallback fair reason for dismissal where there is no other obvious factor for the termination. The EAT has upheld a Tribunal decision that an employee was not dismissed for SOSR (some other substantial reason) where the employer and the employee disagreed over the level of profit share and the failure to agree terms of employment. The employee claimed to have lost all trust and confidence in the employer and was threatening constructive dismissal but neither side acted as if the relationship had broken down. The Tribunal, endorsed by the EAT, held that this was really a power struggle over pay and contractual terms and could not be classed as SOSR.