Mr J Sanghera For the v Dolphin Movers Ltd — 2021

The claimant, Raimundo Cardozo, was employed as a general manager from 3 January 2017 and was dismissed for redundancy on 10 June 2020. His salary had been increased to £37,000 from 1 May 2019. The tribunal recorded that he was told on 30 March 2020 that he was on furlough, but on 1 April 2020 he was told by the sales director to continue working from home, and he continued to deal with calls and quotes. The respondent did not appear and had not engaged with the proceedings since June 2021.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal accepted that redundancy was the reason for dismissal but held that the respondent acted unreasonably in treating redundancy as a sufficient reason because it adopted no procedure at all. There was no warning and no consultation, either individual or collective, so the dismissal was unfair under s.98 ERA 1996. On remedy, the claimant said he had no compensatory loss because he had earned money as a self-employed person, so the tribunal awarded only a basic award of £2,421 and £400 for loss of statutory rights.

The unlawful deduction claim succeeded on the claimant's revised wage calculations. For 1 to 16 March 2020 he should have been paid £1,423.08, and for 17 to 30 March 2020 he should have been paid £1,138.46, but he was paid £1,800, leaving £761.54 unpaid. For April to June 2020 he was paid furlough amounts despite continuing to work from home, and the tribunal accepted a further underpayment of £3,819. The total wages unpaid were therefore £4,580.54.

The protective award claim failed. Although the claimant contended that more than 20 people had been made redundant, the tribunal found that there were 18 redundancies at the relevant time, not 20, so the s.188 TULRCA 1992 collective consultation duty was not engaged. The tribunal also noted that, although it would otherwise have struck out the defence under Rule 37, it declined to do so because the claimant was ready to proceed and liability and remedy were interlinked.