Mr Ryan Cardiff, Ms Annalisa Bruno, Mr Nathibed Wongkampoo, Mr Steve Dillon, Mr Renato O’Leary, Mr Onur Yoruk, Mr Gerson Ventura and Mr Tamas Toth v London Stock Photography Ltd — 2023

The respondent did not present a valid ET3 and did not attend the hearing, so the tribunal determined the claims in its absence under rules 21 and 47. The eight claimants were photographers employed on full-time permanent contracts, with differing start dates and salaries. The tribunal accepted that wages began to be paid late in 2022, that October 2022 to January 2023 wages were unpaid in whole or part, and that the respondent also stopped assigning jobs through the online scheduler. The claimants remained available for work, tried to raise the arrears through calls, emails and ACAS, and the tribunal found that the respondent failed to engage meaningfully with those complaints.

On those facts, the tribunal held that the respondent committed a repudiatory breach of contract by failing to pay proper wages and by stopping work being assigned. It found that the claimants were entitled to resign and did resign with effect from 31 January 2023. Because the cessation of work applied to all eight photographers and the employer no longer required them to carry out photography work, the tribunal held that the resignations amounted to constructive dismissal by reason of redundancy. It then awarded statutory redundancy payments to six claimants, but not to Ms Bruno or Mr Dillon because they had not completed two years' service.

The tribunal also awarded one month contractual notice pay to each claimant and awarded unpaid bike allowance for October 2022 to January 2023 at £250 gross per month for four months. It accepted the claimants' schedules of unpaid wages, with the wage awards varying by claimant, and recorded total awards for wages, notice pay, redundancy pay, bike allowance and the ACAS uplift. It applied a 20% uplift to the wage and bike-allowance awards under the ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures, but not the full 25%, because there had been one meeting on 5 December 2022.

The tribunal declined to award holiday pay because it did not have sufficient evidence of the amount of accrued but untaken leave for each claimant. It noted that the awards for wages, notice pay and expenses were gross amounts, with tax treatment to be handled in the way explained by Walters t/a Rosewood v Barik. The total sum payable across all eight claimants was £116,961.25.