United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	No appearance or representation by or on behalf of the Appellant
For the Respondents	No appearance or representation by or on behalf of the Respondents


 


MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL QC

1. In this appeal, Mrs Ranee Baghri seeks to have set aside, as erroneous in law, the decision of the Leicester Employment Tribunal, contained in Extended Reasons before us at pages 4 - 8 of the appeal file, sent to the parties on 15 December 1999, after a hearing which took place on 7 December 1999.
2. The Respondents were originally described as Unisex Hair & Beauty Salon, but as recorded at the beginning of the Tribunal's Extended Reasons, the correct Respondent is in fact Mr Alvin Bailiss, trading as Unisex Hair & Beauty Salon.
3. This is the full hearing of this appeal, having been set down for full hearing by an earlier Order of the Appeal Tribunal on 21 June 2000, when the short judgment which is before us recorded the view of the Tribunal then hearing the case, that there was what was described as "just an arguable point in this appeal".
4. In the event, neither party to the appeal has appeared before us, but the Tribunal has before it, written representations in short letters dated 9 February 2001 from the husband of the Appellant, and 25 January 2001 from Mr & Mrs Bailiss, the Respondents, indicating that neither is planning to attend before us.
5. The proceedings before the Tribunal were brought by Mrs Baghri who had been employed with the Respondents' hairdressers business for a period of only a month from 13 August to 13 September 1999 as a trainee hair stylist. She claimed money due for wages, and that she had been unfairly and wrongfully dismissed on the second of those dates.
6. The answer from the Respondents to those proceedings was that her employment had been brought to an end when it had become apparent that she had no experience of any kind that fitted her for the job, since she was much less qualified and experienced than they had been given to understand, when she was taken on.
7. The only issue before us on the appeal is as to the amount of compensation awarded to Mrs Baghri. The Tribunal have found as a fact, that when her employment was brought to an end, she had been unfairly dismissed because she had indicated that she would be applying to an Employment Tribunal for the award of an amount due to her for the minimum wage, because the Respondents had reduced the rate of her remuneration when it was discovered that she was much less qualified and experienced than she had claimed to be, and the reduction had brought her below the minimum wage level for the hours she had been in their employment.
8. As found by the Tribunal in paragraph 4 b) of their Extended Reasons, on page 7, the actual reason for her dismissal had been that:

" the applicant has said that she was going to make an application to the Employment Tribunal, claiming that she should have received payment for the weeks 27/28 August and 3/4 September at the rate of £50 per week and that the deductions of £20 were unlawful and unauthorised."

In consequence, as recorded by the Tribunal in 4 c) of their Extended Reasons:

"The dismissal was automatically unfair under the terms of section 104 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 because she was dismissed for asserting a statutory right, namely, a right not to have unauthorised deductions made from her wages contrary to section 13(3) of the 1996 Act …"

On that basis the Tribunal ordered the Respondents to pay the Applicant the sum of £90 only, being the amount of the unlawful deduction from her wages.

9. It further held that she was entitled to compensation in respect of the unfair dismissal, (she not having sought re-instatement or re-engagement) as recorded in paragraph 6 of their Extended Reasons, where they dealt with the assessment of compensation as follows:

"In assessing the amount, we take into account the fact that we do not consider that the applicant has fully mitigated her loss. It may be that her ideal part-time job is in hairdressing where she can gain experience but in the meantime, she should have been prepared to take other work, which would have paid at least £50 per week for two days work. From our knowledge of employment circumstances in the East Midlands we consider that if the applicant had applied for other jobs than hairdressing, she would have found employment within four weeks of losing her job with the respondent. We consider it just and equitable to make a compensatory award of £200 which is made up as follows:

4 weeks at £50 per week £200."

10. There is no appeal by the employers against the finding of unfair dismissal, or the awards made by the Tribunal, but this appeal has been sent forward for hearing before us on Mrs Baghri's appeal against the compensation.
11. The error of law alleged is a misdirection or "perverse finding" on the part of the Tribunal in awarding as little as £200, and taking into account their own local knowledge of general employment conditions in the East Midlands, in concluding that, on the balance of probabilities, she would have been able to secure alternative employment within a period of 4 weeks.
12. We have carefully considered the various arguments put forward in the papers before us, and canvassed in the short decision given by this Tribunal on preliminary hearing, that we have unanimously reached the conclusion that, on a closer examination of this case, there is in fact no arguable error of law on the part of the Tribunal here.
13. The assessment of compensation, in circumstances such as these, is of course, a matter of fact and degree for the Tribunal, and the Tribunal's reasons for arriving at the figure they did, are in our judgment, adequately explained in their decision.
14. We reject any suggestion that it was improper on the part of this Tribunal to bring to bear their own general knowledge of employment conditions in the East Midlands in dealing with the question of whether the Applicant had mitigated her loss, which is a question to which the Tribunal's attention is specifically drawn in the legislation itself, under section 123(4) of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
15. It appears to us that the whole point of having these questions of fact and degree, such as compensation, decided in a commonsense way by a local Tribunal with lay members having practical knowledge and experience, is that they should bring that practical knowledge and experience of general conditions to bear, in reaching the conclusions that are required under the legislation.
16. We have considered the points canvassed in the Appellant's Skeleton Argument, to which we are referred in her letter of 9 February 2001, (which was the Skeleton Argument used already before this Tribunal at the preliminary hearing). We have concluded that these points amount to no more than attempts to take issue with particular points of fact on the evidence already dealt with by the Tribunal, and assertions that witnesses before the Tribunal were making false statements or lying. They appear to us to give rise to no issue of law which would be right for this Tribunal to take into account. For those reasons, we now unanimously dismiss this appeal.