United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

BAILII case number: [1994] UKEAT 630_93_2704

Appeal No. EAT/630/93


 


I N T E R N A L

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

At the Tribunal

On 27 April 1994

Before

HIS HONOUR JUDGE J PEPPITT QC

MR T S BATHO

MRS P TURNER OBE

---

MR L BOSTON          APPELLANT

MOUNT CHARLOTTE THISTLE HOTELS          RESPONDENTS

---

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised


 


---

APPEARANCES

For the Appellant MR B LEONARD

Free Representation Unit

1st Floor

49-51 Bedford Row

London WC1R 4LR


 


JUDGE PEPPITT QC: This is the preliminary hearing of an appeal from a decision of the London South Industrial Tribunal made on 22 April 1993. The unanimous decision of the Tribunal was that the Applicant before it, now the Appellant before us, was not unfairly selected for redundancy and therefore was not unfairly dismissed. The short facts of the case are as follows.

The Appellant commenced work for the Respondents at their hotel in Wimbledon on 24 June 1987 as a kitchen porter. In May 1988, as the Tribunal found, he was promoted to head kitchen porter, receiving in his new post an allowance of £20 per week for which he was required to undertake certain further responsibilities. Towards the end of 1991 business in the hotel trade was at a very low ebb and it was decided that the Appellant's post of head kitchen porter amongst others, was to be made redundant.

The Respondent was consulted about the matter on 20 January 1992; told that his post was to be made redundant and offered the position of kitchen porter, being the position from which he had been promoted to head kitchen porter in May 1988. This would have resulted in a loss to the Appellant of the £20 per week he had received on his promotion. The Applicant was told to go away and think about it. He did so and whether or not he misunderstood the terms of the new offer, refused to accept it and in turn accepted redundancy.

The Tribunal found that the Respondents had reasonable grounds for declaring the post of head kitchen porter redundant; that Mr Slade, who was the officer of the Respondents responsible for dealing with the Appellant's redundancy, genuinely attempted to help him. There was no question of coercion of the Defendant into opting for redundancy rather than electing to take the post of kitchen porter and that it was reasonable for the Respondents to offer the Appellant the demotion to ordinary kitchen porter which they stressed would only have meant a reduction in his wage of £20 per week.

Mr Leonard, who has said everything that could be said on behalf of this Appellant and has said it persuasively and well, takes a number of points in the Notice of Appeal. He submits firstly that the decision does not disclose whether sufficient warning or consultation took place; secondly, he says, the Tribunal do not appear to have considered whether the new terms and conditions of the post of kitchen porter were reasonable before reaching its conclusion that it was reasonable for the Respondent to offer that alternative employment to the Appellant. Thirdly Mr Leonard contends that the Industrial Tribunal failed to consider whether the new terms and conditions of the post of kitchen porter which the Respondents offered, and the consequent refusal by the Appellant of that offer, had any bearing on the fairness of the Appellant's dismissal. It is finally suggested that there was an omission by the Tribunal in failing to make findings of fact with regard to investigations in other departments within the hotel, to see whether there were porters with less service than the Appellant.

We have considered Mr Leonard's submissions overall with some care. It is always possible to trawl through decisions of industrial tribunals and derive from them sentences or findings which perhaps could have been better expressed and perhaps had those decisions been judgments of the Court of Appeal, would have been better expressed; but that is not how industrial tribunals work, industrial tribunals have to live in the real world and in this case it seems to us, that the Tribunal in every day language set out the steps which the Respondents took, correctly applied the law to those steps and came to the conclusion, in the circumstances, that the selection of the Appellant for redundancy was fair. Those findings were peculiarly within the ambit of the Tribunal's responsibility and in the circumstances we have no jurisdiction to interfere with them.

It follows in those circumstances that notwithstanding Mr Leonard's efforts this appeal must be dismissed.