Mrs. T Oakes v Streamline Press Limited — 2021

Mrs T Oakes started work for Streamline Press Limited on 6 April 2016 as a print finishing assistant in the Alpha Card Department. The tribunal found that she had been told at interview that she would have a paid half-hour lunch break, but that in June 2016 the respondent told Alpha Card staff that the paid 30-minute rest break had been removed. It accepted her evidence that from then until April 2017 breaks were ad hoc, usually only five or ten minutes long when production paused or when Mr Sims left for the other unit, and that on most days she had no proper rest break. A separate complaint under section 11 Employment Relations Act 1999 was dismissed on withdrawal.

The tribunal accepted that Mrs Oakes raised a grievance on 24 April 2017 about the lack of rest breaks and asked for a written outcome, but no written outcome was provided. It rejected the respondent’s case that staff were being given “sensible breaks” amounting to 20 to 30 minutes. It found that the respondent’s practice was to prioritise keeping the machines running and that any breaks were only short, ad hoc periods during production pauses, rather than the uninterrupted 20-minute rest break required by regulation 12 of the Working Time Regulations 1998.

The tribunal also accepted that Mrs Oakes continued to complain about rest breaks, including at a June 2019 meeting with Sean Nooney and Kevin Sims, when she was told it was not how the respondent worked, that staff had never taken breaks, and that they should be grateful to have jobs. It found that on 31 July 2019 she told Alan Squire that ACAS had advised that the respondent was breaking the law on rest breaks, that Mr Squire said the company needed the machines running and could only accommodate breaks of around ten minutes here and there, and that when she later told Mr Sims that Mr Squire wanted to speak to him, Mr Sims raised his voice and told her to get back to work. Mrs Oakes left that day and did not return.

Applying Western Excavating v Sharp, Nottinghamshire County Council v Meikle and the implied term of trust and confidence, the tribunal held that the cumulative failure to provide proper rest breaks, the handling of the grievance, the June 2019 meeting and the events of 31 July 2019 amounted to a fundamental breach. It found that Mrs Oakes resigned in response to that breach, so she was constructively dismissed and the dismissal was unfair. It also found the dismissal unfair under section 101A Employment Rights Act 1996 because the reason or principal reason was that she was refusing or proposing to refuse to forgo rights under the Working Time Regulations. The tribunal upheld both detriment complaints under section 45A ERA 1996 and the separate regulation 12 Working Time Regulations 1998 complaint. Remedy was not determined and was left to a later hearing.