Unfair redundancy

Case 1: The facts

Mr Sinnamon and Mr Gilchrist were made redundant following the loss of a contract. Their employer did not follow the terms of a collective agreement stating that it would consult the union and invite early retirement/voluntary redundancies first.

The ruling

Rejecting the employer’s argument that the collective agreement applied only to collective redundancies of 20 or more, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that the employer should have followed the agreed terms; its failure to do so made the dismissals unfair.

The EAT also pointed out that the employer’s failure was not simply a mistake, as managers had said they did not want to take volunteers; although an employer can make a mistake and still act fairly overall, the EAT said, in this case it had not acted in the way that a reasonable employer would have acted.