Mrs H Morgan v Synthetic Turf Management Limited — 2022

The claimant brought claims of ordinary unfair dismissal, automatic unfair dismissal related to pregnancy, pregnancy-related discrimination, and unlawful deduction of wages. The tribunal found that Mr Bell did not know the claimant was pregnant before the dismissal and accepted the respondent's evidence that he first learned of the pregnancy from a Facebook post on 28 October 2020. On that basis, the pregnancy-related dismissal claim and the pregnancy discrimination claim failed because the tribunal found there could be no decision-making tainted by pregnancy where the decision-maker was unaware of the pregnancy.

On the ordinary unfair dismissal claim, the tribunal found that the reason for dismissal was redundancy. It accepted that the respondent had restructured, outsourced much of its work, and experienced a diminution in work of a particular kind, so section 139 ERA 1996 was satisfied. The tribunal considered the respondent's small size and lack of a dedicated HR function, and held under section 98(4) ERA 1996 that the procedure, although not ideal, fell within the range of reasonable responses available to a small employer. It also found that, even if a better procedure had been followed, the claimant would still have been dismissed on 28 September 2020, so no compensation would have survived a Polkey assessment.

On wages, the tribunal found that the claimant's correct contractual salary was £21,000 per annum, not £22,000, and that the move to four days per week from 1 July 2020 had been agreed. It held that the redundancy payment and notice pay were correctly calculated on the pro-rated £16,800 salary, and that the later shortfall in notice pay had been corrected. The tribunal rejected the claim that the company car and mobile phone amounted to wages, holding that they were benefits in kind excluded by section 27 ERA 1996, and it also held that those claims were out of time under section 23 ERA 1996. No separate breach of contract claim in respect of those items had been pleaded before the tribunal.