United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): This is an appeal to determine whether Mr Shah has an arguable point of law in a decision of an Industrial Tribunal held at Stratford on 17 May 1996 by which a Chairman sitting alone held that the Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to consider the complaints of the Applicant, either under the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 or under the Race Relations Act 1976.

The hearing before the Industrial Tribunal was a Preliminary Hearing confined to the question whether either of the complaints made by the complainant were in time. He considered oral and documentary evidence and made certain findings of fact. The first was that Mr Shah worked for the Respondents from 11 December 1989 until his dismissal in July 1994. He was informed that he was going to be made redundant in November 1993. Within a short time he became aware that the employers were recruiting new staff. Eventually he accepted an offer which was made and the Respondents decided that the probationary period, upon which the offer was conditional, had not been a success and informed Mr Shah that with effect from 26 July 1994 he was to be dismissed. The reason was said to be the redundancy which had arisen earlier and Mr Shah accepted the payment calculated on that basis and which contained a discretionary sum of £2,000.

The Tribunal noted that the payment of the sum was to be conditional upon the Applicant signing a formal acceptance, acknowledging that the monies could be forfeited should he seek to challenge his dismissal. We should comment that any such agreement in order to be binding upon the parties, would require to fulfil certain conditions as specified in the statute. These conditions were not specified and such agreement would not have been binding, although Mr Shah may have been unaware of it at the time. We deprecate employers seeking to prevent employees from challenging the dismissal by threatening to remove payments which were agreed to be made to them and we recognise that this is bad practice.

After Mr Shah's departure he raised concerns about what had happened in July, and accused the employers of contravention of the Employment Protection Act 1978, and notified them of his willingness to take legal action, should he not be given satisfaction. By November 1994 in accordance with the Tribunal's decision at the latest, Mr Shah had to accept that the Respondents were not prepared to give him satisfaction. He presented his complaints to the Tribunal both of unfair dismissal and of race discrimination on 15 August 1995; that is more than twelve months after the date of his dismissal and, as he concedes, the latest of the acts committed by the Respondents which were capable of amounting to racial discrimination in his employment.

Accordingly the Tribunal were in a position where the Chairman had to consider whether it was practicable for the complaint of unfair dismissal to have been presented within time and to consider the provisions of the Race Relations Act to extend time, if it considered it just and equitable to do so. After proper consideration of the relevant factors, the Chairman concluded that the time should not be extended and that the Tribunal did not have jurisdiction. That seems to us to be a decision which the Industrial Tribunal was fully entitled to arrive at.

It is, if we may say, a thoroughly competent decision, in the sense that it identifies the points in a succinct and clear form and gives succinct and clear reasons as to why the employee should have his complaint dismissed. There is nothing in the Notice of Appeal which suggests to us that there is an arguable point of law and accordingly we shall dismiss this appeal.