United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR R LEWIS (of Counsel) Michael Scott & Co 27 Britannia Street London WC1X 9JP


 


MISS RECORDER SLADE QC:

1. This is the preliminary hearing of an appeal against the decision of an Employment Tribunal which sat for 12 days hearing complaints brought by two Appellants, Mr Holmes and Mr Murray and one other applicant.
2. There is an appeal by the two Appellants against findings that their dismissals were fair.
3. There is no appeal against the dismissal of Mr Murray's claims that he was dismissed by reason of trade union activities, nor is there an appeal against the decision that he was not selected for redundancy by reason of trade union activities.
4. Mr Lewis has addressed us at some length and we have had a skeleton argument running to some 10 pages and a Notice of Appeal running to 11 pages. It seems to us that the principal complaint made of the Tribunal's decision is that it was perverse to conclude that the meetings which took place with each of the Appellants on 3 and 6 July constituted adequate consultation with them for the purposes of considering whether their dismissals were fair or unfair: see paragraphs 29 and 30 of the Tribunal's Decision.
5. The notes of the interviews with the two Appellants are at pages 61 to 64 in our bundle. We are told that the notes of those meetings were kept and made by the Respondents. Those notes show at their very outset that the purpose of each meeting was to enable each of these two Appellants to express their views and ideas about management's proposal to address the overstaffing situation in the Business Study Section at the College. It appears that there was no discussion about the impact of management's proposals on these two Appellants as individuals.
6. In this case it seems to us that it could be said that the decision as to which posts should remain and how those posts should be restructured was very much tied up with the decision as to who was to occupy them because the skill sets required in the remaining posts would, to a large extent, determine who was to be successful in being appointed to them.
7. We therefore can see some force in the argument that there should have been consultation with individuals as to the type of posts that were to remain before final decisions were taken and we consider, with the greatest of respect to Mr Lewis, that all of the points which have been taken really are subsumed in that point.
8. A further point is taken that the Tribunal decision does not expressly deal with Mr Murray's complaint that his dismissal was unfair and that too is a complaint which appears, on the face of it, to be a justifiable one.
9. We therefore consider that, on the basis that we have outlined, there are arguable points to be taken in these appeals and we give permission for the appeals to go forward to a full hearing.