Claimant v Hunt's Food Group Ltd — 2025

The claimants, a married couple, brought discrimination claims arising from their dismissals as Manufacturing Operatives at Hunt's Food Group Ltd. The tribunal recorded that unfair dismissal was not in issue because neither claimant had two years' service. The claims considered at the hearing were direct age discrimination for C1, and direct age, race, and marriage/civil-partnership discrimination for C2. The tribunal also dealt with the question whether race discrimination had been sufficiently raised in the pleadings and decided, if necessary, to allow it to be considered in light of the wording of the claim forms and the evidence given with the aid of an interpreter.

The tribunal accepted the respondent's evidence about the background events. It found that the claimants had been spoken to about productivity, timekeeping, and hygiene. The respondent's witnesses said they were working more slowly than other staff, that their work had been timed in late 2023, that there were issues with spending time in the changing room and taking longer breaks, and that a February 2024 hygiene incident involving C2 was serious. The dismissal letters of 1 March 2024 referred to discussions about productivity and said desired improvements had not been seen. The tribunal rejected the claimants' contention that the reasons later given were invented.

The age claims failed at the first stage of the burden of proof. For C1, the tribunal found the central factual premise of his case was wrong because he had already reached state pension age before he was employed, so his dismissal shortly before turning 67 could not support an inference of age discrimination. For C2, the tribunal found there was no factual basis from which to infer age discrimination because she was 62 and had not reached state pension age. The race claims also failed because there was no evidence of any policy under which EU citizens were dismissed at pension age, and the tribunal found the claimants had not established facts from which race discrimination could be inferred.

C2's marriage-civil-partnership claim was treated differently at stage one: the tribunal said the fact that she was dismissed at the same time as her husband was arguably enough to raise an inference. However, after considering the respondent's evidence, the tribunal accepted that both claimants were dismissed for the genuine non-discriminatory reasons advanced by the respondent, namely productivity and hygiene concerns, and held that those reasons had not been shown to be discriminatory. All claims were therefore dismissed and no award was made.