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The EAT ruling in Garrod v Riverstone Management Ltd provides welcome reassurance that an employer can initiate ‘without prejudice’ discussions offering a possible consensual termination where an employee has raised a grievance clearly indicating potential legal claims. ‘Without prejudice’ protection can only apply to communications which are a genuine attempt to settle an ‘existing dispute’. … Read more
Employees can claim automatic unfair dismissal (from day one of employment) where they are dismissed because they left or refused to return to work in circumstances of danger which they reasonably believed to be serious and imminent, and which they could not reasonably have been expected to avert. In its first Covid-related dismissal case, Rodgers … Read more
Before COVID-19 and the recent layoffs at Twitter Inc., the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act maintained a low profile; the act did not garner significant media attention, and cases alleging violations of the act were limited and largely routine. An explanation for this, at least in part, is that the WARN Act … Read more
It is common practice for employers to require departing employees to sign a statutory settlement agreement in order to waive statutory employment claims in return for a compensation sum. Unfortunately, it has never been possible to guarantee an entirely clean break in this way, as illustrated by a recent EAT ruling in Bathgate v Technip … Read more
Carrying out a fair redundancy usually involves identifying an appropriate pool from which to provisionally select employees using fair selection criteria, and then consulting with the individual(s) provisionally chosen. A recent EAT decision has made clear that an employer may need to consult at an earlier stage, prior to the choice of criteria, if the … Read more
An employer agrees to a clause in an employment contract requiring it to pay an employee two years’ salary if it terminates the employee’s employment within the first three years of the contract. Can that employer later terminate the employee and seek to avoid paying the two years’ salary by claiming that the clause is … Read more
The Hong Kong District Court has provided a timely reminder to employers of the importance of ensuring that fair and proper processes are followed in the handling of sexual harassment complaints. In this recent case,1 a male employee accused by a co-worker of sexual harassment succeeded in arguing that his termination by the employer amounted … Read more
Employers face paying more than the statutory cap for unfair dismissal compensation in some cases, following a ruling of the Scottish EAT in Dafiaghor-Olomu v Community Integrated Care. The statutory cap on unfair dismissal compensatory awards (the lower of 52 weeks’ pay and, currently, £93,878) applies to the overall assessment of compensation after ‘taking into … Read more
Employers would be well-advised to comply with the procedural steps set out in the Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures when dismissing, unless they can be confident that the tribunal will accept that the reason for dismissal is not within the ambit of the Code. The Acas Code explicitly excludes dismissals on … Read more
