Welcome to this week's Coffee Break setting out the latest legal and practical developments impacting UK employers.
25% compensation uplift applied to sham redundancy
A recent case in the Employment Appeal Tribunal has upheld that the Acas code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures will apply to a dismissal disguised as a redundancy and failure to follow the code in good faith in these circumstances can result in an uplift of up to 25% in compensation. In this case the employer had instigated a reorganisation in which more roles were to be created, but notwithstanding this, the employee's dismissal was labelled a redundancy. The redundancy exercise was found to be a sham as the decision had already been taken to dismiss the employee; her subsequent grievance and the process followed was also found to be as much of a sham as the redundancy exercise.
The code provides basic practical guidance to employers, employees and their representatives and sets out principles for handling disciplinary and grievance situations in the workplace. A failure to follow it does not, in itself, make a person or organisation liable to proceedings. However, Employment Tribunals will take the code into account when considering relevant cases.
Tribunals will also be able to adjust any awards made in relevant cases by up to 25 per cent for unreasonable failure to comply with any provision of the code. Here the employer sought to argue that, as the reason given for the employee's...
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