If you believe you have been unfairly dismissed, you may be able to bring a claim for unfair dismissal. In this event, you should contact us now for a free initial consultation.

A claim of unfair dismissal must usually be brought within 3 months from the effective date of the termination of your employment. It is therefore imperative that you act quickly and obtain advice in order to submit your claim to an Employment Tribunal within the time limit.

The law on unfair dismissal in brief is as follows.

Unfair dismissal

In determining whether a dismissal of an employee is fair or unfair, your employer will need to show:

The reason for the dismissal genuinely falls into one of the following categories:

Capability

If an employee does not have the qualifications necessary to do the job or is incapable of doing the job because of incompetence or ill health, it may be fair to terminate their employment. However, if the dismissal was due to ill health and that constitutes a disability under the Equality Act 2010 and no reasonable adjustments were considered, that may give rise to a claim for unfair dismissal as well as a claim for disability discrimination.

Conduct

This is dismissal due to the conduct of the employee. It could be for a one off incident, which would amount to gross misconduct or it could be for a series of repeated conduct offences where previous warnings were given. Gross misconduct would include, for example, fighting, theft, being under the influence of alcohol at work etc.  In order for the dismissal to be fair, the employer must have a genuine belief in an employee’s guilt having first carried out a reasonable investigation and the decision to dismiss must be relative to the conduct taking all circumstances into account.  You should check your contract to see what constitutes misconduct. Are these provisions applied fairly across the workforce? Are there any mitigating circumstances which were not taken into account in taking the decision to dismiss? Were previous warnings given? Was a fair and reasonable investigation undertaken before a decision was reached?

Redundancy

A role is made redundant not the person. A role is redundant where the work which the employee was employed to do has ceased or diminished. This could, for example, arise due to the employer moving premises or because of a decrease in workload. The redundancy process should be fair and unbiased. This should entail warning and consultation before a decision to dismiss is taken. If there are employees doing the same job as you or similar and they were retained, then check to see if you were put in a selection pool with them and the selection criteria was marked fairly. Fair consultation also includes exploring with you suitable alternative employment within the organisation. Was there a vacancy in the organisation which you could do but were not offered?

Illegality

This is where it would be illegal for you to continue in your role. For example, if you were a lorry driver and lost your licence, you could no longer do the job. In this event, your employer should discuss any alternatives to dismissal with you but if none are available dismissal might be fair.

Retirement

The law on retiring employees changed with effect from 6th April 2011. Specifically, the exemption which allowed employers to retire employees at the age of 65 or above was abolished by the Employment Equality (Repeal of Retirement Age) Regulations 2011.

The law is now such that requiring an employee to retire (or refusing employment to a job applicant) because they have reached a particular age, whether 65 or any other age, will be unlawful unless it can be justified by the employer as a “proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim”.

If your employer dismisses you due to retirement you may have a claim.

Some other substantial reason

This is very wide and is meant to be a catch all category, which covers situations not falling into the above categories. For the reason to be valid it must be for a substantial reason such as to justify dismissal. If you have been dismissed for this reason, you should seek legal advice. We offer a free initial consultation.

The employer acted fairly in treating the reason as sufficient to justify dismissal:

This means that the employer followed a fair procedure before taking the decision to dismiss and that the sanction of dismissal was a reasonable decision to take in all the circumstances.

Therefore, even if the dismissal was for a genuine reason, the dismissal may still be unfair if an unreasonable procedure was adopted or worse, there was no procedure at all or dismissal (as opposed to a warning for example) was too harsh a sanction.

Automatically unfair dismissals

If you believe your dismissal was in truth due to or related to any of the reasons below, then your dismissal may well be automatically unfair:-

Pregnancy and childbirth
Parental Leave
Health and Safety Reasons
Acting as a representative in specific situations
Whistle blowing
Victimisation
Taking part in protected industrial action

The above are only examples. There are many more. As such, please seek legal advice if you
have been dismissed. Contact us now as we offer an initial free telephone consultation.

Constructive Unfair Dismissal

If you felt that you had no alternative but to resign because of the way your employer has treated you then this may amount to constructive unfair dismissal and you could bring this claim in an Employment Tribunal.

What are the elements of a constructive dismissal?

There are four elements in a constructive dismissal claim as follows:

• there has to be a breach of contract by the employer. This can be actual or anticipatory. The breach can be breach of an express term (e.g. pay) or breach of an implied term (e.g. the implied term of mutual trust and confidence);
• the breach must be sufficiently important to justify the employee resigning or the last in a series of incidents which justifies leaving;
• the employee must leave in response to the breach and not for some unconnected reason; and
• the employee must not take too long about leaving.

Should you raise a grievance?

You would not be barred from bringing a claim for constructive unfair dismissal without having raised a grievance first. However, it is advisable that you do raise the matter as a grievance with your employer first because if you do not and go straight to the Tribunal with your claim, any compensation awarded to you can be reduced by up to 25%.

You should note that the time limit for bringing a claim of constructive unfair dismissal in an Employment Tribunal is 3 months from the effective date of termination of your employment. Ideally, you should not leave it to the last minute and submit your claim as soon as possible. Irrespective of whether or not your grievance is still ongoing when the 3 months time limit is due to expire, you should not miss this deadline for lodging your claim.

If you require assistance in raising a grievance or have already done so and wish to take the matter to an Employment Tribunal, then Contact us now for specialist advice.