Ms J Frazer-Reid v Rampage Event Management Limited — 2019

The tribunal found that the parties expressly agreed the claimant would be paid on the 10th day of each calendar month, but that the respondent usually failed to pay on that date. It also found that the claimant was not on many occasions given payslips, that the respondent had failed to comply with workplace pension auto-enrolment duties, and that there were occasions when the claimant was paid less than the hours shown on her timesheets. These matters were accepted as the factual basis of the claimant's complaints about the employment relationship.

The claimant resigned after a dispute about working from home and wrote that late payment of wages was causing her financial difficulty and debt. The tribunal found that her resignation was in response to the respondent's breaches, that those breaches were fundamental, and that there had been no affirmation of the breach by delay or by her conduct during employment. It therefore held that she had been constructively dismissed.

The tribunal then found that the dismissal was automatically unfair under section 104 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 because the reason or principal reason for the dismissal was the claimant's complaints about unlawful deductions from wages. It accepted that late payment itself involved an unlawful deduction and that there were also occasions when she was underpaid, both of which formed part of the reason for her resignation.

On remedy, the respondent did not prove a failure to mitigate loss. The parties agreed the basic award at £1,467.00 and pension loss at £1,446.48. The tribunal found net past loss of earnings of £17,150.65 and a further six months' future loss of £5,268.79, giving a compensatory award of £24,365.92 and a total award of £25,832.92. It rejected the claimant's attempt to recover £8,879.89 and £5,568.56 as breach-of-contract damages for credit card expenditure, savings and overdraft loans, holding that those sums were not recoverable as claimed.