Mr A Johnson v African Caribbean Leadership Company Limited — 2023

Mr A Johnson presented his ET1 on 30 June 2021 after being dismissed for redundancy on 30 April 2021. The hearing took place at Watford on 18 and 19 January 2023 before Employment Judge Caiden. On 18 January the respondent did not attend and asked for a postponement, saying the hearing had been diarised for 23 and 24 January 2023. The tribunal refused that application, applying Rules 29 and 47 of the ET Rules, the overriding objective and the Presidential Guidance, and decided to hear the case in the respondent's absence.

On the unlawful deduction claims, the tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence that the first week's wages had been held back as a 'week in hand' and should have been repaid when the employment ended, so it awarded £189.65. It also accepted that he had worked average overtime of 3.1 hours per week between 30 June 2019 and 4 April 2020, that there was no evidence of time off in lieu, and that the contractual and minimum wage evidence supported the claimed figure of £1,018.04. The separate furlough-pay allegation failed because the tribunal treated it as a complaint about what could have been claimed from the furlough scheme, not wages owed by the respondent.

The tribunal found that holiday pay remained outstanding on termination. It accepted that 9 days of leave were unpaid, including carried-over leave from the previous year, and held that the holiday pay rate should include the claimant's ordinary pay plus the overtime element for holiday pay purposes, leading to an award of £375. It then dealt with statutory notice pay and statutory redundancy pay under the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Coronavirus week's-pay regulations: voluntary overtime was excluded from the week's-pay calculation under s.221 ERA 1996, but the pay rate could not fall below national minimum wage. The dispositive orders award £131.36 for wrongful dismissal/notice pay and £184.80 for statutory redundancy pay, producing a total award of £1,898.85.