Being made redundant without any process is still unfair dismissal.
“Dismissal found unfair. Employer could not rely on inevitability of outcome to excuse procedural failure.”
If you were made redundant without warning or consultationA process your employer is required to carry out before making significant decisions that affect you, most commonly redundancy. It must be genuine, meaning your employer must listen and consider what ..., you were denied something you were legally entitled to. A genuine redundancyA dismissal that occurs when your employer no longer needs the work you do, either because the business is closing, a workplace is closing, or the requirement for employees to carry out that kind of w... situation does not make an unfair process acceptable.
- You were entitled to be told you were at risk before a decision was made, and to a genuine opportunity to raise questions or suggest alternatives. Skipping those steps is unfair dismissalA legal claim you can bring if your employer dismissed you without a fair reason or without following a fair process. You normally need two years of continuous employment to qualify, though some dismi..., regardless of whether the underlying business decision was sound.
- Even where a tribunal finds procedural unfairness, it may reduce any compensation award to reflect the likelihood the outcome would have been the same. But that is a separate question from whether what happened to you was fair.
- Time limits for unfair dismissal claims are strict. If you were recently dismissed without any process, take advice as soon as possible.
The situation
A van driver was called into his manager's office and told, without any warning, that he was being made redundant. There was no prior conversation, no consultation, and no procedure of any kind. The redundancy itself was genuine. The business needed to reduce its workforce and his role was going. The employer's position, when challenged, was that a proper process would not have changed anything, so the absence of one was irrelevant.
What the tribunal found
The House of Lords disagreed. In Polkey v AE Dayton Services Ltd [1987] IRLR 503, the court held that an employer cannot argue its way out of a procedural failure by pointing to the inevitability of the outcome. The dismissal was unfair because the process was unfair. The question of whether following a proper procedure would have made any difference is a compensation question, not a fairness question. Those are two separate assessments.
Polkey v AE Dayton Services Ltd. [1987] IRLR 503. House of Lords. 19 November 1987.