REDUNDANCY ISSUES

Do employers have to hold a selection process if all members of a pool are redundant? Fortunately for businesses, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has said no. Mr Zeff worked for Lewis Day Transport Plc as a manager in the chauffeur department. There was a downturn of business in early 2009 and after a number of meetings with staff a decision was made to close the chauffeur department, so Mr Zeff and the two controllers in the department were made redundant.

Mr Zeff brought an unfair dismissal claim and lost. The tribunal agreed with the company that the chauffeur department was the whole 'pool' and Mr Zeff and the two controllers were the only members of the pool. As none of Mr Zeff and the two controllers was needed and all three of them were made redundant, there was no need for any selection, no need for any formal selection criteria and no need for any formal selection process. Mr Zeff appealed, mainly on the basis that there should have been a redundancy selection process with formal criteria The EAT rejected this argument, saying that there was no question of selection and therefore, no need for matrices or selection criteria.

And in a separate case, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has made it clear in Dabson v David Cover & Sons that when assessing the fairness of selection for redundancy, tribunals should not scrutinise the scoring exercise in the absence of obvious mistake or lack of good faith.

Mr Dabson complained that he had been unfairly selected for redundancy and a proper consultation had not been carried out, and so his dismissal was unfair. He lost his claim and appealed. The EAT emphasised that what was key was the issue of overall fairness and so tribunals should stay away from close scrutiny of the marking in redundancy unless there was an obvious mistake or bad faith. In Mr Dabson's case, the consultation was found to be adequate and the failure to consult did not of itself make Mr Dabson's dismissal unfair.