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LPC Law Notes Employment Law Notes

Redundancy Payments Model Answer Notes

Updated Redundancy Payments Model Answer Notes

Employment Law Notes

Employment Law

Approximately 388 pages

A collection of the best LPC Employment notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (a former Oxford law graduate) could find in 2014 after combing through seventeen LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor". In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of Employment Law notes available in the UK this year. This collection of notes is full...

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The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Employment Law Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

The scenario will usually be:

  • X is employed by Y

  • Y has changed X’s terms so that he works different hours/in a different department

  • If this is the case it will normally be a constructive dismissal question and dealt with in the following order:

WRONGFUL DISMISSAL
IS THE PROPOSED CHANGE A BREACH OF CONTRACT?

  • Identify the term that is being varied

  • Check the contract – Is there a term that allows changes to be made?

    • If so, no breach occurs upon changing the term unless the employer implements such a term in an unreasonable way – that could potentially be a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidentiality which amounts to a repudiatory breach (United Bank v Akhtar)

      • If no term that allows flexibility – breach as the employer has altered the terms of the employment contract
IS THE BREACH SERIOUS ENOUGH TO AMOUNT TO A REPUDIATORY BREACH?

  • Pick out the facts that suggest it is serious:

    • Curtails social life

    • Makes childcare arrangements difficult

    • Material change in the job

  • Pick out the facts that suggest it is not serious:

    • No change to overall hours

    • No change to shift pattern

    • No change to location

      • Conclude appropriately and state it is a question of fact for the tribunal

  • If the breach is deemed not to be sufficiently serious to be a repudiatory breach, it will still be a breach of contract. This means that the claimant can still bring a breach of contract claim in the civil courts. However the claimant must show his loss and this may be difficult as the claimant may not have lost anything (e.g. his hours may have just changed – same pay)
IF IT IS SUFFICIENTLY SERIOUS TO BE A REPUDIATORY BREACH…

  • Continue to work and accept the breach

  • Leave and do not bring a claim

  • Continue work under protest (i.e. raise a grievance as not to waive the breach)

  • Resign within reasonable time on the basis of constructive dismissal and claim redundancy and unfair dismissal
REMEDIES

  • Net salary and benefits for notice period (see wrongful dismissal sheet)
REDUNDANCY
EXAMPLE SCENARIO

  • X is employed by Y

  • Y want X to change to a different department and change his working hours

  • Is this a breach of contract?

  • Does this amount to a repudiatory breach of contract?
ELIGIBILITY

  • Deadline is 6 months (less one day) from Effective Dismissal Date

  • Must be an ‘employee’ (as opposed to a ‘worker’)

  • Must have at least 2 years’ continuous employment

  • Must not be in an excluded class

  • Burden of proof on employee
DISMISSAL

  • Burden of proof on employee

  • Either:

    • Expiry and non-renewal of fixed term contract

    • Actual dismissal

    • Constructive dismissal – repudiatory breach by employer which employee accepts and in response to which employee resigns within a reasonable time
REDUNDANCY

  • Part 1: Was there a redundancy situation? (ERA 1996 s.139) (Question of fact taking into account the actual situation rather than what the contract says (High Table case)):

    • Job redundancy – whole business closes down

    • Employee redundancy – need for employees to do work of a particular kind ceases or diminishes - e.g. public training work has ceased with a focus on in-house training

      • What if work has ceased or diminished so the claimant has been replaced and moved elsewhere? This is still a redundancy situation as any redundancy that ‘bumps’ another redundancy (i.e. some work diminishing has resulted in someone else taking his job) still equates to an employee redundancy (Murray/Safeways)

    • Place of work redundancy – where did employee actually work?

  • Part 2: Did the redundancy situation cause the dismissal of this employee? (employee redundancy and place of work redundancy ONLY) (Consider the contract at this point):

    • Example 1 – Constructively...

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