Mr A Dunn v Altrad Employment Services Limited and 2 others — 2023

At a public preliminary hearing on 10 July 2023, Employment Judge Lancaster dismissed all claims brought by Mr A Dunn against Altrad Employment Services Limited, Alpha Labour and Recruitment Limited and Powertherm Contract Services Limited as having no reasonable prospect of success. The respondents recruit for work at the Ineos site at Grangemouth, and the tribunal noted that the claimant had previously worked for the first respondent and had been introduced to employers by the second respondent on a number of occasions.

The tribunal treated the pleaded case as including a blacklisting claim under regulation 5 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010 and a separate claim under section 137 TULRCA 1992 that the claimant had been refused employment because of trade union membership or activities. The claimant said his complaint was that he had been blacklisted for union duties, but he expressly withdrew any allegation that the third respondent had discriminated against him on the basis of a prohibited list. No relevant prohibited list had been identified or particularised, and when asked to clarify the union activities relied on he refused to answer. The only material before the tribunal was that he was not understood to be a current union member, relied on past union activity, had been vocal in meetings, and had featured in a BBC report on industrial action in 2012.

On that material, the tribunal held there was no present evidence that the claimant had been refused employment because of a prohibited list or because of trade union membership or activity. It also dismissed the whistleblowing complaint because no particulars of a protected qualifying disclosure had been given, any alleged disclosures in earlier ET1s were not identified with sufficient factual basis, were not made to an employer, section 47B ERA 1996 does not apply to recruitment, and any disclosure did not obviously satisfy the public interest requirement. The tribunal did not need to determine whether the claims were also scandalous or vexatious, although it noted the claimant's conduct at the hearing.