Miss Firmene Kayembe v Tesco Stores Ltd — 2024

The Claimant, a Team Manager at the Respondent's Yiewsley store from May 2012 until her dismissal for redundancy on 27 April 2023, brought complaints of unfair dismissal, direct race and age discrimination and unauthorised deductions from wages. An application to amend to add a further discrimination complaint relating to a ten-year long service award was refused, the Tribunal considering the prejudice to the Respondent of defending a stale allegation to significantly outweigh the prejudice to the Claimant.

The direct race and age discrimination complaints, concerning the line manager's failure to present the Claimant with a certificate for completing the Options placement (with a younger white colleague as comparator), were presented outside the statutory time limit and the Tribunal did not consider it just and equitable to extend time. The Tribunal recorded that, even if in time, the complaints would have been dismissed on their merits because there was no evidence from which an inference could be drawn that the reason for the less favourable treatment was race or age, a point conceded by the Claimant's representative.

The unauthorised deductions complaint relating to pay during the Options placement was withdrawn in closing submissions; the overtime element was dismissed because the Claimant failed to show a quantifiable deduction. On unfair dismissal, the Tribunal was satisfied the genuine reason for dismissal was redundancy and that the Respondent acted fairly: warning and consultation were undertaken, the selection criteria were fair and objective, and the scoring on the selection matrix was reasonable and not influenced by the Claimant's earlier complaints. The Tribunal added that, had the dismissal been unfair, it would have applied a 100% Polkey deduction.