Igbo v Johnson Matthey [1986] ICR 505

• Plaintiff was granted 3 extra days holiday but had to sign an agreement saying that if she failed to return to work on time her contract would be terminated. This happened because Plaintiff was ill (with doctor’s letter), and she was sacked.

• CA said that because you can’t contract out of the ERA 1996 (under s.203 - no limiting of provisions or excluding jurisdictions of tribunals) and this agreement would do so unless it is accepted that the automatic termination constituted a dismissal, which the court held it to be. 

Parker LJ

• The ERA extends the concept of dismissal to cases where there is apparently agreement but the employee is not willing to leave, e.g. non-renewal of fixed term contracts (s.95(1)(b)) or leaving after being given notice (s.95(2)).

• Thus it isn’t true that a person’s leaving as a result of an agreement rules out the possibility of a dismissal.

• The agreement’s provision for automatic dismissal limited the scope of the ERA’s unfair dismissal provisions and was therefore invalid. It DID constitute a dismissal.

  • This appears to suggest that any agreement which deprives an employee of the statutory rights (in effect, even if it doesn’t do so expressly) is invalid.