United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR G PRICE-ROWLANDS (OF COUNSEL) MESSRS GOODMANS SOLICITORS 6/8 BROADWAY NORRIS GREEN LIVERPOOL L11 1JS


 


MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL QC:-

1. We are all satisfied that the appeal in this case warrants us directing it to go forward for a full hearing. The decision of the Tribunal, the extended reasons for which were sent to the parties on the 29^th July 1999, shows that the Applicant who was employed by the Ford Motor Company as a spot welder was dismissed on 2 November 1998, following an incident on 22^nd October 1998 when, in the words of the Tribunal in paragraph 16 of their reasons – "he appeared to have absented himself from his workplace for a period of some 1½ hours", returning only to clock off at the end of his shift.
2. As the Tribunal observed the background to this was that on a previous occasion in November 1996 he had been administered a final warning, when for a relatively short period of time he had also left his shift without ensuring that somebody was immediately available to take over from him. That had been a matter for which he had been disciplined by the company on that earlier occasion. As the Tribunal record in paragraph 12 of their decision, but Mr Price-Rowlands who appeared for the Appellant contends was not supported by the evidence before them:-

"In accordance with Mr Farrell's contract, such a warning remained on his record for 3 years and the Company were therefore reasonably entitled to regard it as in existence in October 1998".

It was on that basis that the Tribunal determined that his dismissal following the incident on 22^nd October 1998 was fair and reasonable in the circumstances, saying in paragraph 15 of their decision that on 22^nd October 1998:-

"he behaved in a way that the Company was reasonably entitled to regard as further misconduct"

they concluded that in such a situation it was impossible for the Tribunal to say that no reasonable employer would dismiss and for that reason concluded that his dismissal had been reasonable.

3. Against that decision the Appellant appeals on the grounds set out in his Notice of Appeal on page 2, paragraph 6 (a)-(e) inclusive; an earlier paragraph (f) having been deleted at an interlocutory stage of these proceedings. Mr Price-Rowlands on his behalf urges in particular that the Tribunal arguably erred in law in failing to investigate sufficiently or at all, or address specifically in their decision, the merits of the reasonableness of the dismissal in November 1998: in particular by not looking further into the circumstances in which the warning came to be recorded against Mr Farrell from the earlier occasion, whether it was reasonable for such a warning to have been retained and held against him on his record for so long; and whether, in any case, it was reasonable for the Tribunal to have approached the matter on the basis of a dismissal for some kind of misconduct following an earlier final warning, when it appeared from the evidence that the company had, in fact, actually dismissed Mr Farrell for what they then viewed as gross misconduct without regard to the existence of the earlier final warning at all.
4. In addition, on the papers before the Tribunal there appears to have been a factual issue about whether, on this particular kind of shift which was a voluntary shift, as a matter of practice employees were permitted to go off their shift having achieved the target of production for a shift, which it is common ground that the Appellant in this case had in fact done.
5. We are satisfied that those points give rise to arguable grounds to merit the attention of this Tribunal at a full hearing of the Appeal and we accordingly direct that it should be set down for such a full hearing. We direct it should be set down in category C with a time estimate of 2 hours. We direct that the terms of the final written warning document, which are not before us but we understand were before the Tribunal and may be of considerable importance, should be added to the documents in the Appeal file.